#-did not have canon face so people could not act like she was a representation
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katyspersonal · 9 months ago
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People that headcanon Maria as butch lesbian and/or Eileen as black woman and still are kind and respectful to different takes are good and beautiful and lovely and Great Ones can't even help them to ascend any further because they are already perfect and they get so many bitches.
People that headcanon Maria as butch lesbian and/or Eileen as black woman and trash on different takes while accusing people of bigotries are terrible and dumb and absolutely repulsive and do not take homophobia/racism seriously if they think having different headcanons on fictional characters is any of these bigotries, they should stop using the pretense of caring about real world issues to get away with shunning, passive aggression, bullying and cruelty in the fandom for the "awful sin" of being different and Rom would never want to be friends with them
People that started to dislike these headcanons just because of bad experiences with toxic fans should temporarily stop keeping track on fandom updates so they can heal and rediscover them, contradictory spirit doesn't make you free from bad people but makes you another side of the bad people coin and true freedom lays in raging individualism, don't let them claim headcanons as their weapons because butch lesbian Maria and black Eileen did nothing wrong to you and exist to make people happy, it is their enforcers who are bad.
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seireitonin · 1 year ago
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Some Jane hcs?
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🖤Yes :3 luv her 🖤 (will be going off Jane R, the canon one not Jane A. I love the lesbian representation Jane R is! :) Also some of these are gonna be canon)
Jane was a woman with a normal life
The two suburban parents, normal school life, normal love life
Just normal and happy
Her and Mary met in high school
Mary was a cheerleader and Jane being her best friend at the time watched and supported her
Jane didn’t realize she was a lesbian till she saw Mary with a boyfriend in high school and got extremely jealous and didn’t understand why
And Jane never liked a boy before but she knew she felt something for Mary
When Mary and her boyfriend broke up Jane and her cuddled as Jane comforted her and they shared their first kiss
They stayed together ever since then
Even though it was the 90s/ 2000s when they started dating most people accepted them
Jane’s parents included
They got married as soon as they were able to
Jane’s normal life continued with Mary until her parents were killed by an at the time 19 year old Jeff
Jane was absolutely devastated and wracked with grief
She stayed in bed not moving for months
Some days she just cried and screamed and nothing else
She also got paranoid
What if he tried to hurt Mary next?
How could Jane let that happen?
She couldn’t
So she did research on Jeff like crazy
It was really unhealthy
Also took self defense classes and made Mary take some too
But with all Jane read about this guy, she knew that still wouldn’t be enough
She wanted to avenge her parents, the police were useless in helping
She wanted to protect Mary, Jane can’t bare to loose the love of her life
So what’s the answer to those problems?
Take a risky government observed and produced experimental drug called Liquid Hate of course!
She went into the facility blank faced, telling them they could experiment on her
Inject her with as much as they needed
Make her stronger and she would do anything for them
She was willing to throw away her old life completely for revenge
Jane didn’t care. In her mind any chance she had at a “normal life” died with her parents
She would be too afraid, too full of grief and pain and paranoia to live a normal life and move on
So she would become a weapon to protect the one person that matters to her. Mary.
It’s all she could do
And that’s exactly what happened
Her transformation was slow and painful
Pre transition she had dark hazel eyes and really dark brown hair
Now she has all black eyes and lips, pale skin and black hair
When she was injected with it it’s like all her anger came out full force for 2 minutes and she lost all control of herself
She destroyed everything in the room, lashed out at the scientists, injuring a lot of them
They had to sedate her and strap her down
When she came to, she apologized and is more or less acts like her normal self
She looked in the mirror
Her old life was truly gone
They told Jane all about her new powers which include
Enhanced strength and speed, vocal mimicking, shape shifting, healing, regeneration and regeneration of limbs, drug and alcohol tolerance and almost infinite stamina (this is canon btw)
Jane was now an assassin for the CIA and FBIs Justice Department (also canon)
And she didn’t even tell Mary
Jane went home and Mary screamed until Jane calmed her down
“Mary, it’s me! I-“
“What the fuck did you do?!”
“What I had to do to keep you safe.”
“And that is?!”
Jane explained everything
“What…how…you…”
“I know it’s jarring okay? But it’s still…me. I understand if you can’t love me because I look like this. I understand if you want to go. But just know I truly did do this for you and for myself. I have to protect you and avenge my parents.”
“You are so impulsive and stupid! But you’re still as beautiful as ever. You know I’m never going anywhere.”
They shared a kiss in the kitchen
Jane was so lucky to have Mary
Jane takes out any criminal asked of her and ones not asked of her too
Rapists, serial killers, p3d0s, abusers
Anyone that society doesn’t need
But her ultimate goal is to kill the man that killed her parents
Jeff the killer
She won’t stop until that happens
Jane doesn’t kill or hurt innocent people
She wouldn’t dream of it
Why be like the man she hates?
Jane’s actually really nice despite everything
She can be very sarcastic and snarky too though but can you blame her?
She’s still violent towards criminals though
Like extremely violent
They remind her of Jeff and she calls it “practice” for when she finally gets her hands on him
His death will be slow and painful
Jane has a sister and other surviving family members that she hasn’t seen in a while (how could she even begin to explain her life now)
Jane is 38 years old
Born September 1st 1985
Jane is Wasian (white and Asian, Japanese specifically) but looks more Japanese
She kinda looks like a type of vengeful Japanese spirit called the Onryō and has come to like it
people think she is one sometimes
Especially when she makes weird ass noises to freak out her victims/ mess with them
Jane really relates to Onryō due to the stuff that happened in her life
Her mother would often tell her stories about the Onryō especially around Halloween
Jane finds it ironic that she kinda looks like one with her pale skin, tall stature and long black hair
Especially when she wears white since Onryō are often depicted in white burial kimonos
She especially feels like one when she comes out of the darkness, quietly and slowly as if she’s floating her black eyes looking at her victim through the dark
She specifically relates to some parts of the story of Lady Owia. A man ruining Jane’s life, “killing” her old self and the life she knew, making her a vengeful person and leaving her “disfigured” and looking like an Onryō
Sometimes she still gets upset and will scream and cry at night in the middle of nowhere, making her look and sound like a spirit in pain
Despite the fact she’s still alive she sometimes feels like she died with her parents
Maybe she is just an Onryō in a humans body
She can speak fluent Japanese thanks to her mom
Jane understands Kagekao fully
Both of them being gay Japanese people who have pale skin and are good fighters is really coincidental
Kagekao thought Jane was a spirit or something supernatural due to the grief and vengeance coming off her
But to his disappointment she’s just a cool looking human
Jane really doesn’t like him
He’s a serial killer who kills people for shits and giggles like Jeff and she can’t stand that
Jane knows he’s a demon because he told her and Kagekao thought Jane wouldn’t understand him
They both also have voice mimicking powers and they use it against each other all the time
Jane is jealous of his parkour skills though, she wants to get better at it
When Jane is in a violent mood or in a fight black veins will appear all over her body, but it’s most noticeable oh her face and especially on her temples and forehead leading into her eyes as the veins pump and bulge with blood. Very unsettling to look at.
Jane is usually 5’10 but if she wants to look more intimidating in a fight she will make herself taller like 6’3-6’5
Jane is romantic/ trad goth and listens to the music since she was born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s it’s nostalgic for her
Jane wears black everyday because she thinks all other colors look bad on her
She wears white to sleep though
Jane’s eyes are pitch black so you have no idea where she’s looking or what she’s looking at
It’s kinda scary when she looks at you especially if it’s dark
But she’s pretty so it’s okay
Loves Japanese comfort foods and will cook them a lot like really good ramen, mochi ice cream, udon, kastu curry, tempura and hot pot
It reminds her of her mom
Jane’s kinda happy that she has long shiny black hair like her mom now
If you were ever gonna run into a Creepypasta and live, Jane’s definitely your best bet
Likes to shapeshift to look normal to take Mary on dates
Wears black dresses when she’s not fighting but when she is, jeans and a sweater all black of course
Sounds like Amy Lee from Evanescence when she sings
A smooth soothing voice when she talks
Lived with Mary in their home till she got roped in with all the other pastas (but that’s a completely different hc list completely)
Since Jane works for the government she’s rich. Like really rich
So she’s always clean and put together
Can walk in heels like a pro
Jane’s a queen and I love her
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This isn’t proofread I made this at 3 am sorry lol
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brightblueflare · 1 month ago
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Cats with white fur and/or blue eyes are very likely to be at least partially deaf.
To be precise, white blue-eyed cats have an 80% chance of being deaf or hard of hearing. They also have a higher chance of losing their hearing later on.
As usual with disabilities, there are only like, two or three deaf cats in canon (and one of them was Strikestone I think, deaf only in one ear), and all of them are awful representation one way or another. Snowkit dies, Strikestone dies (but his death is something I can't comment on, since I haven't read anything past OotS in the main series and I don't plan to) and Fallowfern retires early because of hearing loss.
Cats rely on their senses of smell and hearing to hunt and fight, so deafness should, realistically, be a big trouble in the Clans. In particular, for ThunderClan cats, who live in a forest full of noises they need to watch out for.
But I have standards for how I treat disabled characters, unlike the Erins. I refuse to say "oh, X cat is deaf, I'll shove them into the elders' den", just no. And since cat genetics (catnetics?) say 'half the cast should be deaf!' (this is even mentioned in canon, during TPB, when Cinderpelt straight up says blue-eyed white cats are usually deaf), I'm definitely using it.
For my AU, Snowkit survives. This is because his canon's dead is stupid. He didn't hear the hawk that killed him coming, but no cat should have. Birds of prey don't exactly go shouting "sneak attack" whenever they're hunting. Snowkit should have been able to run for cover because his eyes are fine, he should have seen the hawk. He didn't hear the warning about the hawk, but... everyone knew he was deaf, they should have known he couldn't hear them, and done a tail signal to gesture for him to come. Because tail signals do exist. They're used constantly, in fact. But for the one time they were actually needed, no cat used them.
For me, it's clear: ThunderClan's (and by extension the authors', since we're supposed to take this at face value) ableism killed Snowkit as much as the hawk did. The only reason for killing Snowkit was to make his mother retire, and they chose the most cruel, ableist way possible. I will NOT do this. So the Blazing Sky AU has a deaf character. I still don't know what to do with him, but he's, at the very least, living long enough to become a warrior.
Oliver, Princess' mate and Cloudtail's father, is white with blue eyes. I latched onto this and thought: Cloudtail isn't deaf, but his father could be. So for the Blazing Sky AU, he joins SkyClan. Complex kitty sign language doesn't exist in the Clans or in town. Princess and Oliver want to communicate, and they're trying, but it's hard. Then, Oliver has the idea of giving meanings to movements, something he can see and understand. That way, Princess can talk to him.
*adds basic kitty sign language to my long list of ongoing projects*
Princess and Oliver live rent free in my head, they're by far one of my favorite couples for the AU.
Cloudtail's hearing is fine at first, but he gradually becomes deaf in one ear. He tends to avoid Gatherings because ugh, hearing in crowds. On the bright side (for him, not so much for others), he becomes bolder and cheekier with his retorts, because now he can say whatever he wants and not hear the responses. Act, if you care so much. He does struggle with hunting at first, but he has a very blasé attitude towards his difficulties. Fake it 'till you make it and all that.
I love this guy. One of the few characters I like the way they are in canon.
Fallowfern is up in the air. I want to do something with her, but I'm not sure what. If she shows up, I'm definitely keeping her hearing loss, but I really have no idea how to write her. *light bulb turns on* Oh!
I love writing characters that aren't angsting over their disabilities because being disabled isn't a tragedy. Disabled people can still live happy, fulfilling lives. However, I understand that disability is, well, disabling. There are things you won't be able to do, and it can be hard to come to terms with your disability(ies) if you were fully abled before.
That's the story I want to tell with Fallowfern: a woman (molly, but you get what I mean) becoming disabled and adapting to her new capabilities.
As an apprentice, Fallowpaw was eager to learn everything there was to Clan life. I don't know who mentored her, but whoever this mysterious figure is, they taught her the importance of determination and discipline. Fallowpaw was taught to listen before speaking, to pay attention to her surroundings, to hear what others weren't explicitly saying. She was a hunter, and a prodigy. She could hear the move of bird wings, the squeals of mice and the steps of rabbits. She brought more prey than her peers combined, and she was made a warrior a full season ahead of her littermates.
As Fallowfern, she kept the Clan fed through very harsh and cold winters and flooded springs. She was her former mentor's pride, a disciplined, clever and bold hunter who wasn't afraid of going after big rabbits and hares and even birds of prey. I imagine her choice to hunt big and dangerous animals left her covered in scars, which is a big deal in my Clan Culture.
They are warriors, of course scars should be important.
But as she started losing her hearing, everything fell apart. She couldn't hear a mouse's squealing or a human's footsteps, she couldn't hear the way the leaves rustled when she stepped on them.
Fallowfern went from being a prodigy warrior and hunter to … something less.
SkyClan is my favorite Clan and I want to fix the mess canon made with them, but I don't want to make them perfect. They shouldn't be perfect, they mustn't be perfect. Nothing and nobody needs to be perfect in order to exist (says the perfectionist *cough cough*). So, unfortunately, SkyClan struggles with ableism.
Fallowfern's Clanmates try to be accomodating and give everyone a place in the Clan regardless of disability or lack thereof. But sometimes they don't trust Fallowfern, Oliver or even Cloudtail to know their limits. It's…overprotectiveness, if you will.
It frustrates Fallowfern to no end. The ableism, coming from both her Clanmates and herself. She wants to keep being the great warrior she was before, but she can't. She can't be the prodigy she was, not the way she wants to be.
Everything else is… kinda up in the air.
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davekat-sucks · 6 months ago
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homestuck's fanbase is really making me feel like giving up on the story as a whole... Jesus, I might just call it quits soon. Listening to idiots try to defend how shit Homestuck's story became is too exhausting. It reminds me of when I was listening to lectures of, people who hardly counted as, writers go off about how important it is to prioritize representation over all else. They never realized if you do a terrible job with writing a story, you do a terrible job of representing women, different racial groups, gay men, ext. They don't want to write female characters like they're people who make mistakes and grow. Those authors wanted women to always be perfect and always in the right and her biggest obstacle is that men don't believe in her. You can see that in Star Wars with Rei or Captain Marvel as an example of the mindset I'm talking about.
I liked homestuck because so many of the female characters had challenges and flaws. Aradia, Terezi, Rose... They had amazing stories and their flaws made them interesting.
Homestuck could have been a story about different people who have completely different mindsets coming together for a common goal. Homestuck is just... soap opera drama and shitty teen romance at the end of the story where the characters just wait for the story to finish and most of the audience left. In the epilogue, it feels like all of the characters gave up. I suppose Kanaya did put in effort to find Rose and make sure she is safe, I'll give the story credit there. Dirk wants something too. Dirk's goal is just to close the loop and create the first universe in the first place but all you ever hear people talking about is how his motivations have something to do with the shitty meta fiction gimmick the story has going on. "Gotta keep the story going or else the characters fade out of memory" That is such bullshit concept. Sounds like a justification for why there are so many Star Wars shows now. Sounds like milking an IP. Quantity of quality kind of excuse.
And, for the record, my beef isn't with how the fandom represents it's own headcanons or interpretations of the characters, my beef is with how people talk about the canon. Fandom and canon should be two different things. But people act like the fandom should influence canon. I thought the point of both of the cherubs were to show that is a bad idea. Fanon being in canon feels like it derails the story, even the homosuck part that Caliborn came up with.
I'm getting tired of trying to even find a space in this fandom. It's occupying too much of my freetime now. I have so much nostalgia for homestuck but now it feels like trying to get back on the swings of a playground, too old for this shit. Fuck, I adulted too hard and I outgrew fandom I guess. Shit sucks.
Ah well, at least they fans are having fun. But how much fun can you really have when Rose screwed over Kanaya in two timelines? Kanaya felt like a better character in the epilouge cause she's given a challenge to face that is unique to her and her relationship with her wife. Rose's dad brainwashed(?) her to leave her wife, wow, Kanaya that's some shit. Just sucks that she is getting cucked AGAIN. Is it a universal constant that Kanaya is just going to keep falling for women who don't respect her? Maybe she should have stuck with Vriska. All of this Kanaya Rose drama is a bad sign of what's to come. I think it's disrespectful to the fans that are still sticking around. I'm not really included in this bunch. My horse tapped out of the race years ago. People who are still holding out for hope this story is going somewhere are either the most optimistic people out there or the most beaten down.
It's no wonder so many people who worked on homestuck abandoned ship. Toby looks like he's having a good career and Hussie looks like he's afraid of what he created. Maybe there is poetic justice to be gleaned from all of this.
It had lot of creative ideas and talent. But through it, there are cracks and messes that can't be ignored. Even now, the same kind of messes appear again in present times and I think people are scared to talk about it in fear that the thing they love was not as great as they though it was. We really are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. Even when moments in the series and narrative itself that tells the audience that we were stupid to even care, we stayed because we loved it for what it was back then before the meta shit kicked in. The whole revival of the series so it won't fade away and being comparable to Star Wars is a good way to describe it. The team not taking risks to actually go outside of the Homestuck cast, tell a new story, or even trying to focus on the base webcomic alone that made it popular in the first place. They can't even put more focus on Hiveswap just yet because they know people know Homestuck first before Hiveswap, despite said game could make a better introduction or entryway for people to get interested in the webcomic. I'm not sure what is going on through Hussie or James Roach's mind for all this.
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listen i get everyone saying “oh they wanted them to have love interests in case this was the series finale” nah kristen rydel just fucking hates buddie. here’s something that would have made perfect sense as a series finale without introducing love interests that once again are just the first women they cross paths with and who will not be developed as characters:
the emergency is over and the baby is born without natalia there and then it’s meditation flashback time. eddie’s flashback is chris coming home with the model he built and he says it got an A and eddie says something like “proud of you bud!” and they hug and eddie kind of realizes that he is enough for chris and he’s not a failure as a dad just because he’s single and chris says “i’m going to tell buck when he comes over” and eddie kind of smiles and says “yeah i bet he’ll be super proud too”
buck’s flashback is he goes over to eddie’s to play video games with chris and to check up on eddie. brief scene of them playing games on the couch and buck says something like “looks like i have to go couch shopping AGAIN.” eddie responds like “well you know you’re always welcome on our couch” and they go back to playing the game and it resembles this scene
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that’s all it would have taken for me. series finale showing them as a family again. especially since we haven’t gotten much buckley-diaz family stuff this season. i don’t even need buddie confirmed and honestly i wouldn’t have even the slightest negative word to say about this episode if it was just more platonic stuff because even if they really genuinely did plan on making buddie canon, i would want it to take more than one episode for them to go from strictly friends to a couple.
i’m just so incredibly frustrated that once again the writers and specifically kristen have decided to shoehorn in female love interests just for the sake of having them. once again buck has stumbled his way into a relationship that he made no choices in. natalia decided to leave and natalia decided to come back. i could be remembering wrong but i don’t think he was even the person to ask for the initial coffee date. he didn’t really pursue this relationship at all. meanwhile once again we have eddie making every single choice with marisol. hell he didn’t even think of her romantically until she helped him solve a problem for chris because once again he is following christopher’s heart and not his own. and then to have the woman in the van say that she is caring for her best friend’s daughter felt like the final slap in the face to say “see look platonic friends can be legal guardians to their friends kids!!”
it wouldn’t even be that frustrating if the show wasn’t queerbaiting. and i’m being serious i get a lot of shows will get accused of queerbaiting for having male friends who are a little too close but this show straight up puts stuff on purpose of people thinking they are a couple or should be. between the botfly livestream comments, the elf in season 2, the “boy crush on eddie” comment, and the “he gets that a lot you should see his kid” conversation they are actually and literally queerbaiting.
i don’t know i’m hoping season 7, especially with a new network that does not play about queer representation, will finally act on the obvious and blatant queerbaiting, but only time will tell.
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lakesbian · 2 years ago
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@bestbutchbracket
Rationally I am aware that this bracket is Not That Serious. For fun, even.
This did not stop me from accidentally putting together an entire campaign video and essay for Lake. She's butch butch, in the way that was incredibly important for me to see on TV, and seeing her in the bracket made me legitimately really happy. I wanna share the butch Lake highlight reel with the participants who haven't heard of her before and don't have time for 1 1/2 hours of television over a Tumblr poll!
So I present to you all: An organized highlight reel (of lots but certainly not all) of Lake's Butch Moments, plus a bonus essay. The people should be properly informed about their candidate options before they vote!
She really does deserve a win, despite not being one of the "iconic" options. She's one of the best butch characters I have ever seen, and I'm damned picky about what I call butch representation. She's not just gender non-conforming--she's the main character of an entire season about her struggling against systematic oppression and asserting her right to exist no matter how many times she's told she's not a person. She faces police brutality, she faces dehumanization, she faces constant bias, she faces being systematically discriminated against in favor of a gender-conforming girl and a boy, she faces being told that she doesn't even exist, and every step of the way she defiantly asserts: I am a person, I am not the feminine girl you want me to be, and I am going to keep living no matter what.
And she's just so deeply butch even beyond the big sci-fi metaphor-driven narrative about oppression. She's cool, she's strong, she's kind and thoughtful but she doesn't take any shit. She loudly criticizes toxic masculinity. She's brave, she's scared, she's tough, she's silly, she's angry, she's loving, she's loud. She contains all the multitudes I recognize and love in other butches. She's the sturdy person her friend can lean on when he accidentally steps in mud and needs to lift a foot to shake it off. She blushes and stammers when a group of pretty girls compliment her buzzcut. She's got massive boots and a DIY'd tank top. She hates cops. She gives hugs that could break backs. She's eking out an existence in a world that explicitly doesn't want her.
Lake is honestly something special. Infinity Train was the only time I've ever gotten into a completely mainstream and fairly popular show and then, out of nowhere, received an entire season explicitly about someone like me living my experience. I know that Sailor Uranus and Mo and Jess Goldberg and all those characters are iconic, but I'd legitimately place Lake in the same tier as them in terms of quality of representation. I cried the first four times I rewatched her season because of how familiar it was. Infinity Train is a sci-fi show, but it's primarily about people being people, and its depiction of Lake's gender non-conformity (addressed primarily through a very literal sci-fi metaphor in which her being made of metal acts as a handy stand-in for gender non-conformity whenever her appearance is being discussed) is painfully, wonderfully, recognizably true to the butch experience. She's the bracket's baby butch--both a relatively newly made character and canonically young--and she deserves a win to welcome her into the ranks of famous butch characters.
C'mon, vote Lake so she can proudly show off her new crown to all the older, more famous butches in the poll. They'd be proud of her. After all the time she's canonically spent being unfairly stuffed into boxes, she deserves a little recognition for what she actually is: hands-down one of The Best Butches you can find in any media.
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summerwritesfics · 1 year ago
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🩷More Than Nice
Pairing: Harumi Hasashi(Harumi Shirai)/Kuai Liang Length: 796 Words Rating: General Warnings: Fluff, Feelings Realisation, Bisexual awakening (although kinda in reverse of how this usually happens), Sexuality just be like that sometimes, My crack ship is canon now holy shit
Mortal Kombat Oneshots Masterlist
Notes: AYO, pour one out for me; the one fucker who shipped Harumi/Kuai before it became canon and now has to constantly endure the hatred people have for both this ship and Harumi. 👍🏻 But yeah, this is a short fluff piece I wrote when the preview for Invasions mode was revealed. So again, I’ve had this written and edited for a while, just needed to post it. I always kinda liked the concept of Kuai Liang having a reverse bisexual awakening, where he thought for a long time he was gay, and then bam, Harumi comes along. Sexuality do be like that sometimes, it’s not a rigid as people seem to think. I think it’s interesting to delve into. Anyway, enjoy! The Harumi pegging Kuai porn will come at a later date ;P
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“You don’t look at any other women the way you look at me.”
Kuai Liang looked up from his bowl of miso soup with an extremely cute frown on his face. Harumi knew he’d probably disagree with that description. It was true though. He was very cute. Handsome. Very polite and respectful. A little bit shy and unsure of himself. Some might have said awkward, but that was more the lack of regular socialisation outside of his clan and brothers.
“What do you mean?” He mumbled, keeping his voice low like he did not want anyone to overhear their conversation. She could understand that. Kuai Liang definitely was not used to being around civilians, and especially not used to conversations that weren’t matters of the utmost importance.
It was rare she managed to persuade him to leave the training grounds at all during his visits. He was here to train, as per his father’s request, and that was what he intended to do for the most part.
But occasionally, every now and then, she managed to win him over.
“You look at me the same way you look at the men you train with,” she elaborated, and Kuai cocked his head ever so slightly.
“With respect and admiration?” He questioned, his voice ever so slightly braindead like he was trying a little too hard to act oblivious.
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
It was hard to miss the way Kuai looked at the men he trained with. Well, to her it was, it seemed the men in question hadn’t seen. She couldn’t explain it other than if she were required to give a visual representation of “puppy love”, then Kuai Liang would be it. And initially, he only ever wore that expression around those men.
That was until she realised he was doing the exact same thing with her.
Kuai glanced around, shifting in place, like he couldn’t get comfortable. Finally he looked her directly in the eye, and said “I don’t really know what to tell you.”
He deliberately took a sip of his soup, clearly stalling for time while he could come up with something to say. It was a quirk she’d noticed early on. When he didn’t have a reply straight away, he’d find a reason he couldn’t answer. If that was sipping his soup, taking a drink, or even shovelling about 10 Gyoza into his mouth at the same time.
She still occasionally laughed to herself when she thought about how pudgy his cheeks had become.
“I have always known I was… different,” he finally began after swallowing. “While my peers would discuss the attractiveness of women, there was something…” He bared his teeth slightly like he was trying to think of another word than the one he’d already used. “It was like, they would point out an attractive woman to me, and I could acknowledge that they looked nice, but it was never anything more than that.” He chuckled slightly, although not a happy chuckle, one with a melancholy timbre that broke Harumi’s heart a little. “For the longest time, I simply believed myself to be broken.”
“Oh, Kuai Liang.” It was inconceivable, the idea that he could think there was something wrong with him for something so normal.
“It was a while before I realised that what they were seeing in women, I was seeing in men.” He pursed his lips slightly, glancing down at his bowl. “I believe I am what they refer to as a cut sleeve.” Harumi was vaguely familiar with the term he was referring to, at least enough to understand what he was saying. He was a homosexual. “At least, that is what I had believed until…”
“Until me?” Harumi finished. She wasn’t sure what to make of it, if she was honest.
“Yes, and I know what your next question is going to be,” Kuai said firmly, making sure she couldn’t sneak it in quickly. “You are going to ask me why, and I am not going to be able to answer you, because I don’t know.” Somehow, it seemed like that was the easiest part of everything for him to admit. “I do not know why I feel so differently about you, but I do. You are the first and only woman who I’ve found more than nice.”
“Oh,” Harumi chriped, unable to stop herself from smiling. “Well, I’m very glad to hear that.”
Really, regardless of what Kuai’s sexuality was, it didn’t matter to her. His feelings for her were genuine, she could tell from the way he spoke. She knew she felt the same about him too. Those were really the only two things that mattered.
And somehow, “more than nice” was the greatest compliment she had ever received.
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dowhatteverer · 2 years ago
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If they're a male character who treats women like shit, you RWDE folks will stan the hell out of them, huh?
You literally cannot come up with any other criticism of us outside of projecting the show writers' misogyny onto us because you can't come up with a good retort to our criticisms so you fall back on using buzwords to demonize us.
Look, I don't know what character you're specifically talking about, my blog is mainly centered around Ironwood, and I just posted an edited screenshot of Whitley, so I'll just go over peoples reasons for liking these male characters you've decided we shouldn't like and why we're not misogynists for doing so.
Adam Taurus- let's get something very clear, no one likes Adam as he is in the show. No one likes that he abused Blake, no one likes that he was a faunus supremacist, and no one likes his terrible voice acting. The reason people have still held onto Adam and go out of their way to rewrite him is because he is the embodiment of the show's disgusting opinions on race and the concept of fighting back, and is the main face of the white fang plotline.
Illia? She turned to Blake's side after getting talked out of violent protest, so she can't be a representation of violent protest being necessary. (And it was necessary canonically, According to Blake, the only reason the faunus have most of the equal treatment they get now is because of the white fang moving to a more violent approach) Sienna was a gorgeous character design that existed for four minutes before she was unceremoniously killed and Adam was once again cemented as the big bad. Forgive us for wanting a well written racism plotline rather than a poorly written abuse plotline.
If you're bitching about Ironwood here's the deal, I only like Vol 2-7 Ironwood, because I view vol 8 Ironwood to be an entirely different person. Let's see what sexist things vol 2-7 Ironwood did? He flirts with Glynda in his first appearance (kind of, all he does is say "Glynda! It has been far too long) and she walks off annoyed.
Flirting with a woman does not inherently make a man sexist? JAUNE went out of his way to not hear a no from Weiss and Weiss was treated like the bad guy by her own friends because she didn't say yes to a boy she wasn't attracted to. That's sexist, but I bet you guys don't think it was that big of a deal do you?
Ironwood is mostly shown to care about the opinions of the women in his life, encouraging young women like Ruby when he tells her that going after that masked woman and trying to prevent harm was exactly what a huntress should do. And he defaults to Winter's opinion constantly because he respects her and views her as essentially his second in command. If you're going to bring up the Winter Maiden, I don't know if you can blame Ironwood for providing Hospice care to an old woman with dementia as well as keeping her safe from the villains who want to murder her and take her powers, as well as putting the woman he believes is the best possible fit for the job in charge of taking care of her needs so she when she passes, Winter can take the powers.
Any sexism in that plotline is inevitable because the Maidens are kind of an inherently Sexist concept for the show writers to add onto the story.
Ironwood treated Penny just fine until Vol 8. What we're told and what we're shown in volume 7 is inherently contradictory ("Ironwood says I don't have time for friends" *Ironwood literally lets her hang around these people all the time and have a goddamn party with them*) so that's up to interpretation. I personally think that him keeping Penny on a tight leash in the Beacon arc because of her status as a government funded synthetic person who is also meant to be a weapon, and whose discovery could get Atlas in big trouble and might compromise her safety (which it did for the record) is personality reasonable, BUT I don't agree with it. I think that Penny deserves to be her own person with her own friends, and who can get the chance to live a happy normal life. And her relationship with Ironwood and his overprotectiveness is a big theme in my Remnant City AU.
Ok, so, for laughs. Let's talk about Whitley. I don't know about you, but I feel no need to be nice to people who have never been nice to me even if they are women.
The only women Whitley is shown to be mean to in anyway are his female family members, and if I was ever in his position, I would probably hate them too. His mother basically abandoned him for his entire life and became a neglectful alcoholic, something that every child should have the right to be pissed about. Winter and Whitley barely interact. Winter never mentions him or worries about his safety, and Whitley is not obligated to be kind to someone who clearly doesn't give a shit about him.
As for Weiss? He and Weiss are literally raised in a narcissistic abuse situation (as in the parent abuses the child to further their own goals, not necessarily that the abuser IS a diagnosed narcissist, I just feel the need to clear that up) where their father pits them against each other.
Whitley has also been left by Weiss with his abusers without her giving a damn about him after already being gaslit by his father into believing that Weiss is his competition and not a loved one. Even when Weiss's told that Whitley has been abused by his parents as much as she has, and the reason he hates her is because she chose to leave and never think about him, cementing in his mind that she never cared about him, Whitley couldn't even get a goddamn sentence out before she was threatening him with a military grade weapon designed to kill monsters three times his size.
I don't understand why the show writers thought it was the abused child's job to redeem himself in the eyes of someone who he thinks (with very good reason mind you) doesn't love him or care about him just because she's the main character, and I definitely don't understand why the FNDM took this interpretation and ran with it. But accusing Whitley of treating women like shit because he didn't immediately roll over and do everything he could to appease them when they never even looked in his direction with anything other than a glare? Shut up.
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aceoflilies · 2 years ago
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Welcome to the Ace Space!
Call me Ace! I use she/him pronouns and I'm 22.
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This is my primary blog! If you're looking through my profile because somebody's been liking your Pokéblogging posts, my active Pokéblogs are @humming-pokemon-helpers, @swagtastic-bougie-pompadour, @wigglytuff-guild, @pkmnathlete, @malie-city-library, and @mc-pokeprincess. Happy to talk about them OOC here too!
Otherwise, this blog is where I reblog stuff (sometimes with commentary), talk about my favorite fluff ships & series info, post the rare fics I complete, and sometimes even talk about life!
My main fandoms are Pokémon (most common), Undertale/Deltarune, Ace Attorney, Fire Emblem, and Splatoon (mostly for Pearlina content), but occasionally I'll talk about other series that interest me. Under the cut for post-shortening's sake.
Most of my ramblings are pretty much just character headcanons/interactions, but at times i like to focus on world-building/larger theories, and I'd love to connect with other people with those interests in my fandoms (especially Pokémon SWSH and SV!!)
Also, if anybody ever wants to toss me some writing requests, feel free! Just know I make no guarantee of speed. (If you want to see my writing, here's my AO3!)
A few things to note about me:
This should generally be a SFW blog! Please keep any asks/requests or the like SFW and we’re good.
I post a lot about ships I like! More below the cut. I try to tag 'em.
I try to be canon compliant. I make no guarantees of that.
Maybe I'll post OC stuff here one day???
I block for personal reasons that might include you being an asshole, might include my own personal squicks that are about me. It’s not really personal, just for my mental health.
That's most of the important stuff! Please feel free to reblog, I'd love to find some mutuals here I can talk about shared interests with!!
Favorite characters/pairings/hobbies below the readmore! It's a lot. You have been warned.
My Faves!
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Characters (top favs in yellow, sorry the list is so long,,,):
Hop (Pokémon SW/SH): I could rant about this boy for days and still not have said enough about how much I love him as a rival and character. He is the best thing to come of out SW/SH. And besides, we love Wooloo enjoyers.
Nemona (Pokémon S/V): She has so much passion and energy for battling!!! She genuinely just wants to connect with someone even though she's so misunderstood!!! Also, she can't handle exercise. I feel you, girl.
Hanamaru Kunikida (Love Live! Sunshine!!): I'm not much of a Love Live fan anymore, but I still love Hanamaru so so much. She is sunshine and light and sweetness and a bookworm and she gets so much joy out of enjoying food and spending time with her friends. A comfort character of mine.
Noelle Holiday (Deltarune): She's such a nervous little dork who's actually just a freak (affectionate), and honestly that is peak young lesbian representation.
Kris Dreemurr, Ralsei, Susie (Deltarune): Please ask me to rant about them individually. I love all of their writing.
Pearl Houzuki (Splatoon): I live for her gremlin energy. Yes, even the eating mayo straight from the bottle. I also admire the fact she managed to pull Marina.
Marina Ida (Splatoon): They really did make the coolest, prettiest hacker girl who loves anime and manga and said "make her fall in love with the scrungliest little squid".
Ashe Ubert (FE3H): He's just a little guy!!! A little fella!!! Love his voice acting, his love for books, cooking, and honor, and his tragic backstory. Poor boy.
Ibuki Mioda (SDR2): Is Danganronpa a great series. No. Did Danganronpa give us the most beautifully chaotic lesbian I have ever seen and then cruelly rip her from my hands far too soon. Yes.
Trucy Wright (Ace Attorney): Please, Capcom, please remember she exists, I am begging you. Yes she's another "teenage assistant putting on a brave face so she can help solve the mysteries". But I love her magic tricks and her interactions with Phoenix and Apollo, so here she is.
Apollo Justice (Ace Attorney): Please stop giving him backstories.
Bianca, N, Yancy, Skyla (Pokémon B/W/B2/W2)
Gloria, Marnie, Victor, Bede, Leon, Raihan (Pokémon SW/SH)
Arven, Penny, Clavell (Pokémon S/V): If you want more Penny and Clavell, I write them constantly on @swagtastic-bougie-pompadour.
Lillie (Pokémon S/M)
Nagito Komaeda (SDR2): No defense here.
Komaru Naegi (DRAE): I do not like UDG for many reasons. I do like Komaru.
Miles Edgeworth, Phoenix Wright, Maya Fey, Klavier Gavin (Ace Attorney)
Rin Hoshizora, Umi Sonoda, Kotori Minami, Ruby Kurosawa, You Watanabe, Emma Verde, Rina Tennoji (Love Live!): My grab bag of gay people. I also generally love most of Aqours.
Edelgard, Caspar, Linhardt, Mercedes, Annette, Marianne, & more (FE3H)
Pretty Much Everyone In Undertale.
Dusa, Artemis, Zagreus, Thanatos (Hades)
My OCs! Feel free to ask about them.
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Personal ships!
Mostly in the "I like the dynamics" sense, rather than the "I think these two would be perfectly well-adjusted together" sense. Ships with minors in them are purely fluff.
Hop/Gloria/Marnie (Pokémon SW/SH): Hop/Gloria is my main focus, just because I think their high energy (in my headcanons, anyways) play off of each other really well. I also like Gloria/Marnie for sunshine/serious. I also like Hop/Victor. I think about the Sw/Sh characters a lot.
Nemona/Juliana (Pokémon S/V): After 君と雨上がりを and Biri-Biri, they're canon. But also, you can't just ask someone to be your best rival like that!!!
Pearlina (Splatoon): They were literally built for each other. They are perfect. I will pull out a thesis on the Octo Expansion and Splatfest dialogue. Do not make me do that.
Caspashe (FE3H): Three words. Gay cat dads. (I also like Casphardt.)
Edeleth (FE3H): Yes, I'm basic. Speaking of basic:
Wrightworth/Narumitsu (AA): Like I said. Basic.
Klapollo (AA): I just find 'overly flirty guy and straight-faced serious guy who believes not a word of it' such a fun dynamic.
Suselle (DR): May I please point you to the ferris wheel scene as a whole.
Alphyne (UT/DR): Just a classic. They're cute and complement each other really well.
Komahina (SDR2): In the sense that "I think if you leave them in a room for enough time the room will literally explode". They're fun because they're so terrible. And on very, very rare occasions, fool you into thinking they're not.
Mikan/Ibuki or Band-Aid (SDR2): Let's be honest, 2-3 was a cop-out.
Rubymaru (Love Live! Sunshine!): Sunshine and sweetness.
Standard Love Live ships (When I say standard, I mean basic.)
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Hobbies/other interests! (Alternatively: Ace Touches Grass)
Cooking/baking! I don't post my food much, but I do tag food.
Writing: I started out with Club Penguin fanfiction at age 8 so you know I'm the real deal.
Practicing Japanese! I like to practice by listening to Japanese music (Ado/Suisei/Polkadot Stingray/Aqours/Vaundy/King Gnu/YOASOBI) and playing games in Japanese.
Archery! I got to try out kyudo in Japan. Best thing I ever did.
Sightseeing, trying new restaurants and foods!
Libraries, I work at one!
Reading (one book, in two days, every 6 months.)
Psychology! Mainly clinical and developmental psych.
Collecting stuffed animals and other cute things!
Animals! Favorite are penguins and foxes :)
RTGame, the Drift King Himself
Bad Karaoke (in Japanese.)
If you got this far, thanks for at least skimming over my post! Hope to make some new friends, allies, or maybe at least queer-coded rivalries here on Tumblr.
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neon-moon-beam · 10 months ago
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This is not about not allowing them to be sad, period. This is about the excessive angst the Submas fandom has been largely doing for two years now and how so much of that comes down to not allowing Ingo and Emmet to be anything other than vehicles for angsty fanfics and fanart. Unfortunately a large number of people doing this ignore most or even all of their character traits just to make them sadder, or even veer into ableist territory when they decide, usually Emmet, should just be an “unhinged little blorbo" running around intentionally hurting people or out for revenge (something Emmet would NOT do), or in an “abusive-for-entertainment” relationship with Volo, instead of an adult who is allowed to feel awful and pained about what happened, but retain who he is as a character.
When people decide Ingo and/or Emmet should just be wiped clean of all their characterization (other than talking about Pokemon and trains, though some people remove that too) for the sake of angst, or for the sake of making Ingo and Emmet whoever the writer, artist, etc wants them to be (which is where it starts to really get ooc), and especially for the sake of making them act "feral" or what have you, or turning their entire personalities into just “trauma”, it’s no longer fanworks about Ingo and Emmet; they’ve been turned into completely different characters.
There’s a large contingency of Submas fans who were immediately alienated by the fandom by people who wanted Ingo and Emmet to be nothing more than “sad train men”, did not want them to be the characters many of us (myself included) were fans of before PLA, or grew to enjoy as they are in Gen 5 without regards to PLA, or even enjoy in the context of PLA having a happy ending.
It got to the point, fairly early in Submas’s “revival” or “renaissance” where many people felt there was no space in the fandom for them because the angst and the seemingly high preference for turning Ingo and Emmet into completely different characters to make the angst that much worse was getting out of hand. I’m in a server that started off as an event on tumblr for showing Submas being happy and themselves to combat the angst and ableism (most people in the server are autistic, everyone is neurodivergent), and a lot of us in there just do not and cannot trust the fandom at large to simply allow Ingo and Emmet to be themselves. On tumblr itself time and again for two years, I’ve seen people who refuse to go in the Submas tags because they’re tired of the angst, and seeing characters who are very much NOT Ingo and Emmet, but for whatever reason have their faces. I’ve seen people who try the tags anyway, including with certain words/tags blocked to avoid content they don’t want to see, just to find people who don’t tag their angst. And the way so much of making Emmet “unhinged” or “feral” for the sake of angst veers into ableism, it’s really turned off a lot of people from ever interacting with the Submas fandom. My best friend and roommate is autistic, and felt Submas was the first positive representation she ever got. Then came PLA and the way people decided Emmet especially should react without any regards to his characterization or whether or not they were perpetrating stigma via an autistic-coded character, and time and again she’d ask me if this is what people really thought of her, that she was scary, could snap at any moment, or other, worse things. And she’s not the only autistic person who feels like this.
The ultimate point is reducing Submas to only being “sad train men”, or essentially turning them into OCs, leaving next to no canon characterization, then claiming to love Submas just seems like the people creating this content really just love OCs they gave Ingo and Emmet’s faces to. There’s acceptable and tactful ways to do angst, and so much of what’s going around is not it.
They're not "sad train men"
They're not "sad train men"
They're not "sad train men"
Stop. Interact with the source material. Fanon interpretations are often very out of character, and if you love the ooc fanon Submas, then you don't actually love Submas. They're not remotely sad, they're not creeps, they're not violent, they're not "feral" or "unhinged", neither of them canonically wants to hurt/maim/kill Arceus or Volo or anyone else. What you have is an OC with Ingo and/or Emmet's face. Please free them from their constraints and let your OCs be their own characters.
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dilfdoctordoom · 3 years ago
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On Tom Taylor, the Current Nightwing Run & Ableism
I did mention I was gonna do a post about it, so here we are. There are some things I want to make clear before we begin: the issue exploded on Twitter on the very first day of disabled Pride month; disabled people have been discussing the ableism in Taylor’s Nightwing run since it began; nobody has blamed Taylor for what happened to Barbara in 2011. We are, however, blaming him for the way she is written in his series during 2021. 
I am also going to be discussing the ableism in the fandom in this post. The reactions I have seen, from here to Twitter to TikTok, are showing not only a great misunderstanding of the situation, but a purposeful misunderstanding. The very real reasons disabled people are angry right now have been twisted to make us seem ridiculous and overly sensitive and I cannot help but feel that is very intentional.
Another quick addition: disabled people are not a monolith. Barbara Gordon spent over 20 years as a paralyzed wheelchair user. Stating (and I would like to note, never truly showing) that she is a part time cane user now is still erasing her disability. These things are not interchangeable.
So, with that out of the way, let’s begin.
Tom Taylor’s run is ableist. That is a fact of this situation. He made the active choice to include a version of Barbara Gordon that is ableist caricature. Story wise, the role that Barbara plays could have easily been filled by anyone else. There is no real season, within the narrative and outside of it, for Taylor to include this version of Barbara Gordon, who has received a decade of criticism from disabled people. It’s very well known that this iteration is problematic, to put it kindly, and Taylor is aware of that. 
He made the active decision to include her, anyway, showing, at the very least, that he is passively, if not actively, ableist. Passive ableism is still ableism and disabled people are allowed to take issue with that.
That alone is reason enough for disabled people to be angry. But that’s not why things exploded on Twitter.
On July 1st, the very first day of disabled pride month, the new design for Barbara was dropped. After months of teasing Barbara’s return to a wheelchair using Oracle (see: Last Days of The DC Universe, Batgirl (2016), etc), they debuted... a new Batgirl costume that the artist has openly said draws inspiration from the Burnside suit.
There’s a lot of issues to unpack here, so let’s start small: the issue with consciously calling back to Burnside. The Burnside era of Batgirl stories was... beyond awful. The villain of the series’ first arc, was an AI based on Barbara’s brain patterns when she was disabled. It was evil because of all the rage and pain Barbara felt. The actual Barbara, on the other hand, was good -- because she was able bodied. Because her PTSD had been tossed aside. It was a horrifically ableist era that drove the idea that Barbara’s life was terrible when she was disabled; that it was some horrible, twisted secret.
Comics have kept that narrative going. Barbara is seen hiding books on chronic pain; she reacts aggressively to the mere idea that she could be in a wheelchair again, acting like it would be weakness. Whereas Barbara had once been Oracle not because of, but in spite of, her disability, who was fantastic representation for the disabled community, she now acts like it is the most shameful thing in her life.
To call back to Burnside is to call back to that ableism and make no critique of it. If anything, it’s to embrace the ideas of that era.
There is also the design itself to consider. Many people have pointed out the inclusion of a back brace, as if that saves it from ableism -- it does not. Any person who has ever worn a back brace can take one look at this design and know that they did not consult a disabled person. Hell, by how impractical that thing is, I doubt they even Googled a picture of a back brace.
It’s a superficial acknowledgement that Barbara is supposed to be disabled. Something that was apparently thrown in to appease the numerous complaints of Barbara being able bodied; something that no one working on it put any effort into.
When it comes to aids, this is not a new thing for Barbara in Infinite Frontier. She’s said to be using a cane occasionally, that we got a better look at in Batman: Urban Legends, and as any cane user can tell you... that is not a cane that could feasibly be used. It’s another pathetic attempt to acknowledge that Barbara is supposed to be disabled, without actually doing anything of importance.
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[IMAGE ID:  A segmented cane with a tri-pointed handle with a wrist strap. There is a stripe across the sections to connection them, labelled “solar battery charger buttons”. The text reads: “telescoping antenna doubles as cane or weapon if needed”. END ID]
Dropping this design (which we have now established to be problematic) on the very first day of disabled pride month is a sickening move. The very first day, and DC has doubled down on their disability erasure, thrown in superficial things like a back brace to act like it’s fine.
Tom Taylor is definitely involved in this, whether you like it not. No, he is not in anyway responsible for the events of the New 52 and what they did to Barbara Gordon, but that does not absolve him of blame for what is currently being done to her in his run.
When the design dropped, it started trending due to disabled fans reactions. To be clear: we were directly calling out the ableism in this design. This was Tom Taylor’s response:
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[IMAGE ID: A tweet from TomTaylorMade that says: “Hey, @Bruna_Redono_F I think our new Batgirl suit is getting some attention.” He then adds a winky face emoji and tags @jesswchen and @drinkpinkkink. Attached are a screenshot showing that Batgirl is trending in the United States and a picture of the design itself. END ID]
This is him, bragging about how the disabled community reacted. Perhaps before this tweet, you could’ve made an argument that he was not ableist, but after he flaunted the fact that disabled people were rightly furious over this, like it was something to be proud of? No. If you are defending him, you are a part of the problem.
Taylor has included ableist writing in his Nightwing run, beyond the inherent ableism that comes with the current iteration of Barbara Gordon (whose inclusion, yet again, is his decision).
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[IMAGE ID: A panel from Nightwing #79. Barbara and Dick are standing in his apartment. Barbara is saying: “I have some pretty new technology holding my spine together. I’m happy to do most things -- eat pizza in the park, take down low-level thugs -- but leaping from rooftops seems... unwise.” END ID]
What Barbara says in the panel above has bothered a lot of disabled people. The implication that she couldn’t “eat pizza in the park’ and “take down low-level thugs” without a spinal implant that conveniently erases her disability is... fucked up, to put it mildly. Those are both things that Barbara has done in a wheelchair. The first one is something wheelchair users can do and the implication that it’s not is beyond offensive.
But, let’s leave Barbara behind for a moment. I have previously mentioned that disabled people have been discussing the ableism present in this run long before July -- and that ableism is not only centred on Barbara. Dick is also a player in all this.
Dick Grayson was shot in the head. I don’t believe I need to retread the story, but just in case: Dick was shot in the head by KGBeast, developed amnesia from the event, and went by Ric Grayson for a long enough period in comics. If you have been active within the DC fandom for the past year or so, you know all about this controversial storyline and its fallout.
The Ric Grayson arc concluded itself the issue before Taylor became the writer for the series and ever since his tenure has begun, Taylor has completely ignored the reality of Dick being a disabled man. We understand this is comics, that things do not function the way they do in our world, but still -- it is clear that this gunshot wound to the head has affected Dick massively. We had an entire arc dedicated to how he struggled to find himself in the aftermath.
Taylor is choosing to write Dick as an able-bodied man, despite his canonical injuries and how they would impact his life.
This man is choosing to give empty gestures towards Barbara being a disabled woman (as discussed above, the completely dysfunctional back brace, etc) whilst writing her as able-bodied as possible. He writes both Dick and Barbara as able bodied as humanly possible. That is ableist. He is ableist. This is the same man that said he made a dog disabled ‘in honour of Barbara’. I do not think I need to elaborate on why that is bad.
The least he could’ve done, was get a sensitivity reader. We know that Taylor is not beyond getting people from marginalized communities to consult on his work (see: Suicide Squad), so why, when writing two characters that should be disabled, one that the disabled community have been criticising for a decade, does he not reach out to a single disabled person? A mere Google search could’ve improved the situation massively. In both the new design and the current writing, it is beyond clear that this is not just an able-bodied person writing it -- it’s an ableist person.
He could have listened to the numerous disabled fans that spoke out. Instead, he chose not only to refuse to do that, but to describe justifiable anger as ‘raging’. He treated us like we were crazy for daring to speak out about blatant ableism being parading around of us in our pride month.
Tom Taylor has failed to do the bare minimum and in doing so, he is, at very, very least, guilty of complicity. Again: passive ableism is still ableism.
The argument at hand is not just about Barbara Gordon and the continuing ableism that shines out from her current writing. The argument is about the treatment of disabled characters in his run. It has also become about the way he treats physically disabled people.
We also can’t have this conversation without acknowledging the fandom’s role in it all. I waited a day to write this up, to allow all the reactions to flood in... and I am sickened.
We have everything across the board. Able-bodied people that have actually listened to disabled people, who have supported us (which is deeply appreciated). Able-bodied people who may have had good intentions, but a skewed sense of the situation and perpetuating some of the more insidious lies being spread around (IE. that this is only about the new costume).
There are, obviously, the ableist reactions, though, that we will be discussing here. People deeming the current issues as ‘crazy’, calling disabled people ‘overly sensitive’ and ‘delusional’. Many people have completely glossed over the examples given for why Taylor, specifically, is ableist, and instead have resorted to telling disabled people that we are wrong and should be mad at DC instead.
It’s important to note that Tom Taylor is an adult man. He doesn’t need a fandom to attack disabled people for daring to call him out. He is not the victim in this situation; he has, for quite a few disabled people, been the aggressor.
I have seen claims that Infinite Frontier is a ‘slow burn’, implying that disabled people need to patient... as if we have not waited a decade for less ableist writing. There is a complete refusal from able-bodied fans to actually listen to what disabled people are saying. They would much rather rush to the defence of the (honestly rather mediocre) current Nightwing run. 
Disabled fans know that comic book spaces are ableist. We know that both DC and Marvel and many of their writers are ableist. We are still allowed to be pissed as hell about it and acting like the current reaction being had right now is disabled people being ‘overdramatic’ is yet another example of how the able-bodied side of the fandom both refuses to listen to and undermine disabled people when we call out ableism.
We know it when we see it. We always do and we always will and we will always be able to recognize it far faster than an able-bodied person. If this many disabled fans are coming out and talking about an issue, calling it ableism, then it’s time for you shut up and listen.
Stop being a part of the problem and start supporting disabled fans for once.
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jdrizzle15 · 4 years ago
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Her Second Return
Just like all of you, and especially my fellow Penny fans, I am absolutely devastated by the Volume 8 finale. I had been in quite a state these last few days, utterly heartbroken, and actually nauseous at times. It feels strange to me to be legitimately grieving a fictional character, but it’s not a bad thing to feel this way. To me, this just shows that CRWBY loves her just as much as us to have written her so well that we connect so completely with her, that it feels like we lost an actual piece of ourselves when she’s gone.
But as you can probably tell by the title, this mega post isn’t gonna be about accepting this end, not in the slightest! Today I want to share canon evidence that can point towards another return of our beloved quirky red headed cinnamon bun! I’m here to spread this hope that I and others in the Nuts & Dolts dolts Discord server have!
I have this separated into many different sections to keep these thoughts organized. With that said, here goes…
A Father’s Words:
In Episode 7 of Volume 7, ‘Worst Case Scenario’ we learn the origins of Penny’s aura, and thus her soul. We also learn that it takes more aura each time she’s brought back. This leaves open an option that could be used at a later point.
Many people theorized that Pietro could indeed revive Penny one more time, which he would absolutely do. But there also lies the possibility that someone else could donate some of theirs, I’m not sure about this as I feel like it’s akin to blood donation where compatibility matters or there's a high risk of altering her, but the possibility is definitely there.
Now, the conversation in Chapter 5 of Volume 8, ‘Amity’ that Pietro and Penny have is an important moment for both Father and Daughter. It was there to show how her death in PvP all that time ago really did have a heavy impact on him and is still affecting him to this day.
Instead of continuing to pretend that everything is A-okay, like he had done for most of Volume 7, he finally lets his true feelings about how it come out to Penny for what is quite likely the first time. Even going so far as to say "Are you asking me to go through that again?" when she offers to take the risk of trying to lift Amity with her power. He wants Penny to be able to live her life.
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This entire scene with Pietro established “this is what will likely happen” even if circumstances are much different now, it doesn’t negate the fact that this is a key part of Penny’s story. Scenes like these have a purpose beyond simply making an eventual death all the more heart wrenching. Her never actually getting to live her life makes those scenes basically moot. It makes them effectively pointless from narrative point of view. Unless there's more to it.
Building Relationship:
The build up between Ruby and Penny the last two volumes has been absolutely phenomenal with a definite destination in mind, and this doesn’t feel like that destination. So much of the arc of this season was to help Penny. This girl that our main protagonist absolutely adores and treasures, it would just be awful to throw all of that out for what amounts to an avoidable end. Why use so much of their precious and very limited runtime on deliberately building up this relationship only to end it abruptly, and permanently, when they’re separated?
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In my opinion, RT is definitely smarter now than to intentionally set up what was really looking like a budding gay relationship only to kill one of them for good. If N&D wasn't actually going in a romantic direction, why would they leave in all of the romance-adjacent stuff that they got, that's not how ‘just friends’ act. And that is not something you use such valuable time building up for absolutely no pay off whatsoever...
Representation of Hope:
At its core, RWBY has always been about hope. It’s not at the forefront the whole time, but there's been an underlying theme of hopefulness that has persisted since it began. Some describe the show as a Hopepunk, I personally find this to describe RWBY really well. This genre of storytelling is about caring for things deeply and the courage and strength it takes to do so. It’s about never submitting or accepting the way things are. Fighting for what you believe in and standing up for others. RWBY fits all of this extremely well. How does this relate to Penny? She has been shown to be a sign of hope for everyone, but especially for Ruby, the main main protagonist. A prerequisite for a Hopepunk story is the hope.
Her first death in V3 was something that fundamentally changed Ruby. For the first time in the series, we see our main character all but broken by this event. With the loss of Penny, immediately afterwards, Ruby’s hope followed. She made up for it through determination and force of will. We see it affect her multiple times throughout the journey to Volume 7. But upon her return in V7, Hope reached a high point for everyone, the sheer relief on Ruby’s face is plain to see!
In V8 chapter 5 ‘Amity’, Penny literally raises hope by lifting the arena into the sky so Ruby could spread her message. And when she falls, and Amity with her, the connection is lost and hope plummets again. From there things take a very negative turn with the hack begins to take Penny’s agency.
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In chapter 11 ’Risk’ is the point in the arc where everyone is reunited for the moment, so two separate hero stories are no longer a thing at that point in time. For the time being focus seemed to be shifted to care about the characters and how they’re going to solve the current problems. This is also where Ruby reaches her lowest emotional point in the season.
It’s not huge, but it’s interesting how connected this is. Before Ruby and Yang share a good cry over learning the possible fate of Summer, Yang brings up restoring optimism and hope to Ruby after the younger sister storms out of the room in frustration. This is where Penny’s scenes take up the rest of the episode. Getting Penny back in control of her own body and safe again is what makes the ending of the episode much brighter, when just 5 minutes before Ruby had been distraught and scared. This then spills over into the group coming up with the plan to use the staff, putting the main group in a much better mood. Of all the things to go right, it’s interesting that it’s Penny.
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Things go wrong with the plan in the end and Penny dies. I find it interesting that once again, Penny got them hopeful in their chances of doing something right. Given said plan succeeded but at the cost of Penny of all people, Penny is shown to be the beginning and end of hope for them
The highest and lowest points for hope seem to directly correlate to when Penny’s around. When she comes back again, hope will return too, just like it had before. And because she’ll likely be back for good this time, the second return will probably be close to when Ruby is nearing the complete abandonment of hope. This would be pretty par for the course of the show honestly.
A little aside, but in a sense, Penny also represents Unity. The CCT in Vale fell after her first death, knocking out global communications and the unifying connection it gave. When it was restored for the briefest moment, she was there. Her body connected so she could allow for its launch, her soul lighting the night to hold up Amity with every ounce of her strength. So of course when the Hack succeeds and she falls, she takes global comms down again with her. At a smaller scale - even at the Hack's second last attempt to control her, she draws everyone in the Schnee Manor together. At the start of the volume, Yang states the one thing that they all agree on is not surrendering Penny.
Unity seems appropriate for one whose first song and wish was for but one friend, who would go on to find so many more in the process, and permit for a moment the possibility of all Remnant becoming friends once more. Where she first died, the name of the episode devoted to her story - Amity, "friendship", from the Latin root amicus, "friend" - she almost lives and dies with the very possibility of a united Remnant. It's no wonder she's a priority target for Salem, the great divider, and it seems natural that her next restoration may very well allow the next bid to bring the world together.
The Void Screams:
Moments after Penny's death, we hear a weird scream in the void space. It was a guttural, pained, angry scream, almost like the void space itself was crying out. All the portals shuddered and flickered when it happened.
Some think that this scream was Salem returning, but that happens earlier than Penny’s death, her return is signaled with cinder's arm acting up. We know this because after the arm finished flailing uncontrollably, Cinder said triumphantly "she's back." If it were Salem screaming, it would have happened after she fixed herself, but it didn't.
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And I doubt Cinder would have been surprised or unsettled by it considering she was happy Salem returned not long before it. And why would a Salem scream affect the portals anyway, she has no connection to the staff or it's magic.
Another thing to consider is the fact sound is not transmitted through the portals. Otherwise, they would've heard Oscar and the rest calling for them, or the screams of the citizens of Mantle and Atlas. This lowers the possibility of that scream being from Salem even further.
The sound really seems to be coming from something else entirely within the void, and that something is not at all happy. There’s also the fact that Penny was the only person who died in the void space, everyone else was just thrown out of it like Ruby and Co. The only logical cause to me is Penny. Her body was a product (or byproduct) of the same creation magic that made the void space, her blood seems to have been a trigger.
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Now I can't be sure about it, but this makes me feel like Penny is almost a part of creation itself? For whatever this thing is to be so angry, that is the only explanation I can think of currently. But all of this could possibly relate to the Narnia allusion of 'the willing victim killed in a traitor's stead' that others have brought up, which will be covered next.
Narnia Parallels:
Atlas has several parallels and references to fictional places (putting aside real world ones like the United States). One of those is that of Narnia, both on the surface and on a deeper level. It is a land of winter year round, where people struggle to survive and there is a present divide between those loyal to the current Monarch and those who are not. James is a parallel to Jadis, the White Witch, a ruler whose thoughts and cares aren’t exactly centered around the actual well being of the people. The hologram table in Ironwood’s office is designed to look like stone, like the Stone Table which features prominently in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He has a handpicked cadre of special agents/secret police, like how Maugrim and his wolves served Jadis. Another key parallel is how Jadis’s winter sets in to oppress and kill everyone in Narnia, but the Witch provides aid and protection to her loyal followers. She has all the power to spare harm to others, and uses it only for the loyal. As soon as Mantle splits from James and Atlas, no care is taken to protect them from the cold of Solitas even though he has every ability to turn the heating grid back on. His protection is only for the loyal.
Now that the parallel is established, let's look into the details. Starting with how James plays the role of Jadis.
"I had forgotten that you are only a common boy. How should you understand reasons of State? You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is a high and lonely destiny." These are the words Jadis says in the Magician’s Nephew to justify the blood civil war she and her sister had waged for rulership of Charn, before she came to Narnia. She won that war, technically, but only after the last battle had been lost and her sister had marched right up to her so that they were face to face. Jadis’s troops were dead, her followers had surrendered, and the capital was under full control of her sister. But, she still had one card, one ultimate play to win and prove the throne of Charn was rightfully her. The Deplorable Word, a piece of old magic that killed everyone and everything except for her on Charn. It was monstrous, senseless, cruel beyond measure. But it got her that hollow victory. This mindset, the disregard for the people except as tools for her own will, the ultimate ‘aoe’ destructive move that no one had even considered her using, the unwillingness to stop even when by all practical measures the war is over, is a shocking parallel to James. In many ways, he is Jadis in mindset and deed.
Then there is the shared desire for A Thing that both James and Jadis have. For James it’s the Winter Maiden and control over her. For Jadis it’s the Silver Apples from the Tree of Youth. And funnily enough, the Maiden Powers parallel the Apples quiet well. These apples grant power and a life of eternal beauty, but should not be taken or eaten on one’s own initiative. They must be given, a gift granted by another, or only suffering will come from obtaining them. "For the fruit always works — it must work — but it does not work happily for any who pluck it at their own will. If any Narnian, unbidden, had stolen an apple and planted it here to protect Narnia, it would have protected Narnia. But it would have done so by making Narnia into another strong and cruel empire like Charn, not the kindly land I mean it to be.” Jadis’s immortality, and some of her power, come from the fact that she ate an Apple of her own will after stealing her way into the garden where the Tree of Youth had been planted. She gained the eternal life she had wanted and the power along with it, but she did so by taking it and was cursed because of it. Her skin turned pale and her lips blackened as if she were a frozen corpse given life. She will be trapped in a life of misery and hate according to Aslan- oh hey Cinder, how’s having stolen the Power you always wanted working out for you? Cinder had the power she wanted, but she only got hungrier, eager to claim more and increase her might. But in her pursuit she was defeated and humiliated by Raven, had to steal her way out of Mistral, and then suffered defeat after defeat while in Atlas. Only in the end, when she didn’t keep pursuing the Maiden Power, did she get any kind of victory.
The reason these parallels to Narnia are so important is one of the most famous events of the series. The cracking of the Stone Table and the rebirth of Aslan after his death. ‘When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.’ Well, the ‘Stone Table’ in James’s office has cracked, and Penny strikes me as a pretty willing victim. She has never actually committed any actual treachery or harm, as she was the Protector of Mantle, and fought for its and Atlas’s people until the very end. And because of her death, the actual traitor, Winter, who loyally served James until he had gone too far, was saved. Through Penny’s self sacrifice, Winter was saved. So now Death itself will start working backward.
(Major props to my friend @catontheweb for writing this section, I was getting nowhere with it, if they weren't there this part wouldn't exist!)
Norse Mythology:
The tree we see in the post credit scene gives off some serious Yggdrasil vibes. Also called the World Tree, it is essentially all of creation in Norse Mythology. It connects all nine realms, including the God realms of Asgard, the human realm of Midgard, and the underworld of Hel.
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Humans are born from the branches of Yggdrasil. The web of Wyrd is woven for every person once they're born, and their path is set from there regardless of how many times the souls cycle over. But at the end, they're destined to end up in one of the worlds, for a myriad of reasons.
I believe Penny landed closest to this giant tree. She was on the center platform in the void space, so if that space is directly above the island(?) the tree is on, it makes sense for her to fall by the center nearest to the tree. This would not only open up all kinds of possibilities for the volume in general, but it would also create options for Penny.
The whole of Yggdrasil’s representations fit well into Penny’s story. Birth, growth, death and rebirth. We can count Penny’s appearance in V7 as birth for now, her growth is all her development in leaving =the military and becoming a Maiden, her death just happened, and her rebirth would be her revival. And this is a cycle she’s gone through before.
The Norse god Odin and Yggdrasil have quite a connection. In one story, Odin cut out one of his own eyes to gain knowledge from a pool underneath Yggdrasil. The only one that fell whose eyes alone are incredibly significant to the story was Ruby. So, they could choose to have her allude to Odin by having Ruby make some kind of deal with whatever entity likely rules over this magical place. An eye for Penny’s life.
There’s another story about Odin, Yggdrasil and the pursuit of knowledge. Odin so loved knowledge, that he sacrificed himself in a quest to learn the deeper magic of runes. It was believed one could only learn the magic spells from runes in death. So, Odin hung himself on Yggdrasil for nine days as an offering, and teetered between life and death. After he mastered the last spell on the ninth night, he ritually died and all light was extinguished from the world. Odin’s death lasted until midnight, when he was reborn and light returned to the world.
This story doesn’t fit Penny perfectly, but allusions often don’t. So If she really did land near the tree, she could be another loose representation of Odin’s story here. What she did wasn’t for knowledge, but to save her friends and keep Cinder from getting the Winter Maiden power. She believed it necessary that she sacrifice herself to achieve this end. As we established, Penny represents Hope, so her death means the loss of hope. This parallels Odin’s story of his death meaning the loss of light itself. So if this theory holds up, it would make this death temporary, until her rebirth and the return of Hope with her once again.
Alternatively, Ruby has the potential of loosely representing Odin in this story as well. Odin later uses the knowledge of the runes to do many things, but the most relevant one right now is awakening the dead. Both of these stories are about making a personal sacrifice to gain something that is desired. Ruby would absolutely make such sacrifices if it meant saving Penny.
It is said that Odin lived “according to his highest will unconditionally, accepting whatever hardships arise from that pursuit, and allowing nothing, not even death, to stand between him and the attainment of his goals." This sounds like Penny's arc of accepting the WM powers. This is more just a general connection between Penny and Odin, but I found it interesting.
Side Note: I encourage anyone who’s interested to look into RWBY connections to Norse Myth, there’s a surprising amount of things that feel eerily similar to the show. Likely just coincidental, but it’s fun to think about!
(If I got any of this wrong, I sincerely apologize by the way. I researched as best I could, but I admit it could have been lacking.)
Ambrosius and the Staff:
Ruby told Ambrosius "we kinda wanna keep her around longer than that" as part of her very specific instructions. Then Penny died about ten to fifteen minutes, at the absolute most thirty minutes later in-universe. I don’t know about you, but to me that seems very short to be considered ‘longer than that’. Technically it is, but when writing a story and a character says something like that, you typically don’t just kill the character they were referring to basically right away. It makes sense for a week-by-week watch, but in a volume binge, which many viewers do, it becomes ironic how fast Penny dies after being removed from her robotic body.
The first time we see the staff of creation being used, it's to save Penny. Using the staff of creation to help Penny is a sign of how incredibly important she is.
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They’ve even got this entire transformation sequence for her, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to throw all that away two episodes later. In a meta context, it’s a massive waste of time and budget considering the asset creation for Penny.
Penny is a character who has already hopped bodies two times. And now we're supposed to just believe that this time it really is a final death? Just two episodes after we were explicitly told her body isn't what matters, that "Her soul is who she is" and that "the mechanical parts are just extra"? From a writing perspective, it feels strange, like your breaking a promise right after making it. And frankly, CRWBY is better than that, which makes me think this is not the actual end for her.
A possible connection between Penny, Ruby, and the Staff (thus Creation) can be seen in the intro. As Ruby is falling and being dragged down into the darkness, she is shown reaching for the staff. In the void space, Penny is the one with the relic. So with Penny having this strong connection to Creation, and the lyrics “fight for every life” playing as Ruby reaches for the staff, it’s a safe assumption to make, with the knowledge we now have, that the Staff of Creation represents Penny in this particular moment. Which could mean that V9 will be about, at least partially, fighting for Penny’s life.
Musical Hints:
In terms of music, Friend, as a song for Penny, is very dissonant from the episode itself. The song is oddly cheerful for Penny’s recent untimely death, and it overall highlights the wrong parts of death. It’s simply too happy to be a song about losing one of the most, if not the most joyous characters in the entire show. The song also abruptly ends. There’s no outro, and while this could symbolize the fact that Penny died young, it could be that the song itself is unfinished in a story sense.
What do we hear just before the song finishes, though? A progression of notes that sounds eerily similar to the last line of the opening of Volume 8. The notes for “Fight for ev’ry life” and “Who fin’lly felt alive'' share a similar melodic structure, they aren’t perfect clones of each other, but they are incredibly similar, to the point where it seems intentional. Penny may very well be the life that the opening song is fighting for. It is also worth noting that the line “Fight for every life” comes just after “Sometimes it’s worth it all to risk the fall,” which is the exact wording used for the description in the Volume 8 finale. Team RWBY risked the fall, yet, strangely the opposite of fighting for every life happened with Penny’s sacrifice. Perhaps the time to fight for every life has yet to happen, and we will see it come Volume 9.
For another thing, the lyrics for Friend are entirely centered on Penny’s feelings for Ruby, to the point where they read very much like a bittersweet love song. The music itself is incredibly cheerful, as mentioned previously, creating a mood whiplash with the end of the volume. Why would we hear a song about Penny’s feelings for Ruby, sounding like a love song, if her death is supposed to be a tragic sacrifice akin to Pyrrha’s? The song may very well be giving a clue into its future use in the show proper.
If this was meant to be a good bye song, why make it so cheerful and romantic sounding? There's only one part about her dying and even then, it's just too accepting and goes right back into cheerfulness. The song is also pretty hopeful, telling Penny's story in a fairly chronological order. And the part where she talks about sacrifice is quite pointedly followed up by one about feeling alive. It also ends with the super cheerful chorus, the word "alive" being the last... (Remember the episode title: The Final Word)
(I want to thank my friend @shadow-0f-x for writing the majority of this section! I was struggling to choose how to tackle it as I am not well versed in music theory.)
What We Didn’t See:
It is likely that Penny understood Jaune's semblance better than him and figured something out about it’s abilities in the same way that she understood Ruby's semblance better than her. She had plenty of time to observe his semblance up close as he boosted her aura to stave off the virus. Because of that intentionally timed cutaway in the finale, we don’t get to hear her explain herself after her strained “Trust me.” All of that seems really suspicious to me.
Pyrrha Parallel:
Pyrrha and Penny both sacrificed themselves to stop or stall Cinder. Jaune tried to convince the both of them to stop. With Pyrrha, he failed, while with Penny he actively helped her sacrifice herself. Doesn’t make sense for the guy who was determined not to let anyone else do what Pyrrha did, unless of course Penny assured him she’d be alright.
The Moment:
RT including the suicide hotline in the description shows that they're aware that Penny basically committed assisted suicide, seeing it as a noble sacrifice worth doing to save her friends. They're aware, and I believe they're smart enough to condemn that decision to hell and back.
The best way to do that in my opinion is to pull her back into the land of the living and let her witness first hand the consequences of throwing her life away so freely. This would show Penny how her actions affected others so maybe she could learn to truly value herself. To not think herself expendable. It would be bold and unwise to portray this choice as something good, unless it was going to be called upon later and be pointed out for how horrible it really is.
On top of this, Penny was way too content with her death, happy even. There's no way team RWBY is letting her stay content with it. It’s almost as though we're supposed to join Ruby and Co. in calling bullshit on what Penny is saying and doing because no, Penny, this is not how things are meant to work. It's as if Penny was basically saying "I want to die for my friends" because most of the volume had been about everyone else making sure she didn't die. She knows it will hurt them. She knows.
At the peak of it all, a choice like this will totally destroy Ruby. It may very well be her breaking point for Volume 9. Curiously, the moment itself is written like it’s the first choice Penny’s ever made, yet the entire Volume shows this isn’t the case. However, this is the first choice that Penny’s made solely independently and it’s rather pertinent that the choice she makes is a mistake. Outside of giving Winter the Maiden gift and saving the day temporarily, this sacrifice will not have any lasting positive effects. Jaune will be saddled with the grief of killing Penny. Ruby will have to live with losing her best friend and not being able to protect her a second time, and Winter now has the burden of the Winter Maiden abilities, making her a target of Cinder. This is a bad thing, and Penny needs to see the long term consequences.
Transfer of Power:
As we all know, colors in RWBY are really important and get a lot of focus in the show. That means the yellow we see as Penny gives Winter the Maiden Powers was intentional and likely important, no matter how insignificant it may seem. It’s possible that the transfer effect being yellow could have something to do with Jaune’s semblance. When Fria gave the power to Penny, the effect was very much blue, so this transfer should have been green since she was the one giving it this time. The weirdness of this transfer and the focus on color in RWBY really makes it look like something’s up with how that went down.
A little off topic, but Penny saying "I won't be gone, I'll be part of you." makes me think... Winter is smart, so when she gets time to think about what Penny said, maybe she'll arrive at the same question many in the audience came to; if she's literally part of Winter, can they be separated again? If Winter starts questioning that, the possibility of Penny coming back just skyrockets.
Fria actually tells Penny "I'll be gone" before giving her powers up, which is an interesting contrast to Penny telling Winter "I won't be gone". She may have gotten that line from Winter be all philosophical in V7, saying Fria was now a part of Penny, but it hits differently coming from an actual Maiden. S5o it’s possible that Maidens usually actually will be gone, but Jaune's semblance did something to change that.
This could go well with the theory that they won't need to find an aura transfer machine, or build another one, because Jaune will have a semblance evolution allowing him to do the transfer instead. It might actually be that this evolution already happened and the golden light we saw was Jaune transferring penny's aura to Winter in some way?
An observation that I find interesting is when Penny gives winter the powers, not only is the aura yellow but penny completely glows yellow too, and she obviously starts to disappear, but she doesn’t seem to fully disappear, she just glows.
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It's possibly a fading out effect and she does fully fade but animation makes bright light easier, and so we don't actually see her disappear because she's dead and not gone. But it does once again emphasize the color yellow here!
And the color is coming from Penny, it does go up Winter's arm a bit, but Penny is clearly the source. This transfer is so weird and I’m not really sure how to interpret it. There's just actually no reason that we are aware of to make the effect yellow here is the thing. Unless it has something to do with either Jaune or Ambrosius, or potentially a combination of both...
Jaune’s Aura:
The way we see Jaune's aura break in the finale is strange. His aura shouldn't be breaking here. It had been long enough since he was boosting Penny, he's had time to recharge, and it didn't look like it was a strain on him at all. Plus, we know he has a lot of aura, so there probably wasn't too much to recharge in the first place.
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He has a massive amount of aura, it has never broken before as far as I remember. Even if it has though, that doesn’t make this occurrence any less odd. It should absolutely never be a one-hit KO. We didn't see anything that would've drained it, that should not have been enough to break his aura. Unless he did something - something that would require a huge amount of aura - that we just didn't see. That amount of aura drain is far more than just an attempt at healing would do, Jaune absolutely did something with his semblance that took up almost all of his aura.
Pinocchio Allusion:
As any Penny fan knows, her character allusion is Pinocchio, the puppet who became a real boy. Penny deviates from the allusion by having always been a real girl, as Ruby is quick to point out, but she shares many story beats with her original story including multiple deaths. In the original story, Pinocchio dies from being hung by his own strings due to his poor decision making and he dies. Sounds a little familiar, does it not? This is where his tale originally ended. Readers were unsatisfied with this ending however, so the author decided to change the story by reviving Pinocchio and teaching him to be more careful.
Unlike Pinocchio making all the wrong decisions, Penny often makes the right ones, or ones she thinks is right, when concerning others. While usually a good thing, this has meant Penny almost giving herself up multiple times during V8, her last attempt being successful. This is where Penny and Pinocchio begin to share similarities again. They are both very reckless when it concerns themselves. This carelessness comes from different places, but it ends with the same result of them endangering their lives and even sometimes losing them.
In the Disney movie, Pinocchio dies by drowning after going to rescue Geppetto and washes up on the shore (like the beach in V8’s post credit scene). His father is devastated and takes him home to grieve, but as a reward for his selflessness in rescuing his father, the Blue Fairy returns and brings him back to life, as well as granting him humanity. Penny sacrificed her life as well, and it stands to reason that she should be rewarded for it, much like her allusion was.
Penny got her maiden powers from someone with blue aura and then gave her powers to someone with blue aura. So it could be that not only Ambrosius, but Fria and Winter as well represent the Blue Fairy. It could be set up for Winter helping to bring Penny back to life once more. It’s an out there theory I admit, but it’s not outright impossible either. The Blue Fairy in Pinocchio saved him three times that I know of, so RWBY having three representations does make sense.
Geppetto wished for him to live as a real boy, but it depended on what path Pinocchio took. This is very reminiscent of Penny and Pietro. Pietro wants to see her live her life, and surely with him absent in V8C14 that didn't work, despite Penny choosing. Her father did not see her happy enough to live her life, and will only be able to learn her death through others. But Pinocchio's themes were life and being alive. So the likelihood that this is not her end yet is quite high!
A Girl That Fell Through the World:
Penny could be the girl who fell through the world. The girl in the story fled the consequences of a choice. The only person who chose her ultimate fate was Penny. The others were pushed into the void, but she chose to die. The consequence of her choice is Ruby’s grief first and foremost, which Penny won’t see. The girl who fell through the world does come back though, and the world will be changed severely with Penny’s absence. Alternatively, it could also be Penny coming back to Wonderland or wherever they currently are, as long as it’s unrecognizable to her.
What Returning Brings:
Others might say another return would have no story relevant purpose, but I wholeheartedly disagree. Penny gives a profoundly youthful, joyous, and wondrous outlook on the world and story that we hadn't seen since Ruby in Volumes 1-3(not the end), Penny returning would bring a much needed levity back in after the despair they will undoubtedly be going through. While not necessarily a huge thing in most other shows, for RWBY, a show largely about keeping up hope, an ounce of such relief is a necessity.
As much as I hate saying it, Penny’s death does actually make some narrative sense because she had to pass on the Maiden powers. (They could have done this in a number of ways, and I personally think they chose rather poorly, but I digress.) Throughout this whole volume, we can see Penny seemingly being set up to join the main cast, but would have been too strong with the powers. This also accomplishes ridding her of the burden of responsibility that comes with being a Maiden and lets her obtain the freedom that’s so important to her character.
Once she returns, seeing this grief that her actions caused, particularly to Ruby, will get her to realize more that her actions can have serious repercussions. She made a choice, but that choice hurt the people she loves. She must have known that it would but I’m not sure she ever realized just how much.
I didn’t want this post to be heavy in the shipping department, so I largely left it out, but I am going to say this one thing that could have an impact. If Nuts & Dolts is on its way to being canon, which this volume makes it feel highly likely, this could be a catalyst.
It could prompt an arc for the both of them in which Penny learns to live her life fighting for her loved ones, rather than sacrificing it for them. A relationship could potentially start from there. And Ruby seeing Penny learn these things may also help her to stop doing the occasional but very dangerous and reckless things she does. Ruby witnessing Penny coming to terms with what she did to the people that care about her would actually make her stop to think “wait, is this how everyone else would feel if I got myself killed?” That would be a very important moment of character growth for her.
I’m certain there are other significant things that Penny returning can bring to the show. And there are definitely more sections I could add to this. At this point though, assuming anyone even made it this far, I think I’ve been going long enough already. So let’s just roll into the outro!
As painful and hopeless as it seems, I'm choosing to trust them with this because there is absolutely no way they didn't see backlash coming. The way this finale went makes me think that they calculated for backlash and aren’t jumping into something they don’t have a plan to recover from. Whether this trust is unfounded or not remains to be seen, but I don’t think it is currently. I do think, however, that the cause of this backlash was a major misstep. Now that it has happened though, they have a chance to do something good with it.
I know for a lot of you, trust in CRWBY has been damaged, some even irreparably so. And for those that feel this way, I don’t blame you. My trust in them took a hit too, but isn’t broken completely yet. There are many ways that they can bring her back that would make sense with the narrative, they have the ability to make it right, and after going over all of the hints and general weirdness of things many times, I think they will.
I'm feeling pretty confident now and I really didn't expect that to happen at all to be honest. But discussing and theorizing with the discord server seriously helped get my hopes back up surprisingly fast! It’s actually thanks to all of them that this gigantic post even happened! So thanks a ton my fellow Dolts! And a special thanks to!!
@arcana-amicus
@catontheweb
@cosmokyrin
@gaydontmesswithme224
@jammatown919
@shadow-0f-x
They really helped get this thing across the finish line!
And thank YOU for reading all~ of this! I sincerely wish it gave you some of the hope and confidence that I now have!
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fratboykate · 2 years ago
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Have you ever tried to get CFAU out there? We need that as a show ASAP.
Lol...no. And the possibility of it (or anything like it happening in general) becomes grimmer every day. Listen, I'm probably about to POP OFF, but if you want to know how the internet is ruining rep in the industry, then give it a read. If not, godspeed. But you guys should know what you're doing every time you fuckos yet outraged about even the smallest bullshit.
The vast majority of straight actors are now passing on every queer role they get offered because they're terrified of being “canceled”. Apply the same thing to non-Jewish actors playing Jewish roles. Or this and that and that other identity. Y'all have turned this into a climate where people are not allowed to act anymore. The point of acting is inhabiting someone else's body and story, but y’all seemingly want things to go down to specific nationalities. "How dare this non-French person play a French character?!" That's where we're headed at this point.
You guys fail to fucking understand that, whether you like it or not, films and shows don't get made until they have recognizable talent attached. Even then, there are SO MANYYYYY projects with prime fucking packages that aren't selling right now. Series and movies with ensembles of A+ listers as stars and famous showrunners and directors that legit won't find a buyer. That's the market we're currently in.
How many famous, openly queer women do you know? I'm talking face and name recognition that would get a film or show easily made??? Little to none, right? There are VERY FEW (openly) queer actresses in the industry in general and even less so in that A/B Lister level that can actually get things funded and greenlit. What you guys have done is created a hostile fucking environment where actors don't want to take queer roles anymore and what happens if you can't find bankable talent to star in your movie or show??? IT DOESN'T GET FUCKING MADE. The project dies and never sees the light of day. So, as a result of your fake outrage machine, you will create LESS rep on screen instead or more.
I, for example, write projects that are intrinsically queer and from which you can't extricate the inherent queerness. That shit isn’t going anywhere because it’s in the DNA of the script. What do you think is going to happen/is happening when a show or a movie can't find an actor to play a queer character if the script doesn't entirely revolve around their queerness? The character will be rewritten and turned straight or cut out altogether. What do you think will happen when you're clamoring for XYZ ship to become canon on a show and one or both actors say "I'm not comfortable playing a queer character because I don't want to get canceled."??? It's not gonna happen. YOU guys are fucking representation over, not helping it.
It's a veryyyyyy real problem. I'm seeing producer friends trying to put films together right now going through it. No one they've sent scripts with queer characters this year to will touch them. And it's not homophobia. It's literally actors telling them directly "I won't play queer characters anymore because I'm afraid of the backlash." That's the culture you've created, one which will only affect us in the long run.
Hell, I know it first hand. We're trying to package one of my scripts right now and we've already had two prominent actresses pass. One was literally THIS WEEK. I met with her and she outright said to me - TO MY FACE - that she was scared of the internet's response. She said she didn't think "She could sit in press interviews and justify taking this role when it's not her story." She and I talked for an hour and about 20-25 minutes of that was she expressing how uncomfortable she was BECAUSE of the internet. I did my best to assuage her fears during the meeting and she still passed days later. Both she and her agent love the script, which is why she even took the meeting in the first place. But, at the end of the day, when she was weighing risks, she didn't think it was worth enraging the online mob and possibly getting vilely attacked over it.
Let me bring up a tangible example of how your outrage kills projects. Do you remember the biopic where Scarlett J. was supposed to play the lead as a trans man from the 1800s-1900s? Y'all grabbed your pitchforks and got her to back out of the project. Where is the movie now??? The film didn't get made, did it? Because without a name like Scarlett fronting it, that movie was never going to get made. Ignore Scarlett's past. Ignore her altogether for a second and pretend this was any other A-List actress. Let me ask you: would you rather have the actress play the role with genuine respect for the project/character and have a movie that could've put the life of an iconic trans man out there for people who needed to see it...or would you rather have it die and get fucking nothing? In one scenario, you potentially get a film with a major star that would've been watched by a large swath of the general population, could've touched on important queer issues, and probably have a slew of other queer performers in the film as supporting actors. It might have been imperfect rep by the internet's standards, but it would've still been exposure for potentially more than one group in the community. On the other side, you have the reality of what happened now: no big name, no movie, no story being told, no rep AT ALL. Think about what you prefer with your big girl and boy brains.
Truthfully, I don't know that Hailee would've signed up to do Dickinson in today's climate. Dickinson helped Ella figure out she was queer, but she was also a straight woman coming into it. Imagine what a loss that would've been. If they were casting Lexa in 2022 and told Alycia upfront that Lexa would be limp wristed, I doubt she would've taken it. Think about all the iconic queer ships of the last...ten years and ponder how many of them involve actual queer women. Now think about how most of them wouldn't happen with those actors that brought the stories to life because they're terrified of the vitriolic faux outrage mob. Would you rather a straight woman play a queer character, or would you rather have no queer character at all?
You can scream till you’re blue in the face about "WELL, THE INDUSTRY SHOULD CHANGE AND THEY SHOULD CAST UNKNOWNS TO PLAY THESE CHARACTERS". Sure sure, that's all fine and dandy in your fantasy land, but that’s not the real world. When you ask an investor/company/studio to put millions of dollars on the line, they want guarantees that they're getting their money back. You can only even remotely attempt that by putting faces people recognize on the screen. This isn’t a game and it isn't charity. They're not doing this shit out of the kindness of their hearts. These are real investments of cold hard cash that people are making and in their minds, the easiest way to ensure those investments is by having talent audiences are going to watch. Especially when their competition is your favorite thing in the world: Disney/Marvel and franchises. Fewer and fewer movies get made every year. Why? Because investors and studios would prefer to pour money into a "guaranteed" thing like a pile of hot garbage, 300 million dollar budget, superhero movie with a bankable name, over making ten 30 million dollar movies that they don't know if they're going to lose money on. Some actors still do things outside tentpoles, but who is left to play the queer roles if they're running from our stories BECAUSE OF YOU? Who is going to be the thing that attracts investors? No one. Then we get jack shit. And that, that is a problem of your own doing.
So when someone writes a really fucking fantastic project with...idk...a queer Jewish lead (or just something in the vein of CFAU) that you would've loved to watch/would've been wonderful for the community and no actor will touch it because you've made any type of diverging from one's specific identity a crime then you have no one to blame but yourself. You'll never know the project existed because you killed it and it didn't get made, but trust meeeeeeeeeee...y'all are killing outstanding projects every day with this shit.
LET.PEOPLE.ACT. That's the whole goddamn fucking point. As an actor, you're supposed to act like something other than yourself. You're supposed to embody and explore different experiences. If you can only play EXACTLY what you are, then what the fuck is the point. What are we even doing?
Cut all this shit out.
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skymagpie · 1 year ago
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I feel like no one would start shit with you over this, because it is something people don’t mention given that it’s obvious and sort of the point of Al-An’s arc in Below Zero. I’d argue that Al-An is equally our protagonist in BZ simply because he has the setup for a classic tragic story structure.
But when things like these are brought up, I feel that it’s good to read it both in the meta as you did, but also in their universe and according to the laws of their world to get the correct picture of the character and in this case, Al-An did act as best as he could given his upbringing and the circumstances he found himself in (which would make him a tragic hero despite his flaws). Al-An comes from a planet where experimenting on animals is not morally reprehensible, is part of their culture and it is a culture that considers themselves above both biology and mortality. Al-An comes from a culture that is as close to Gods as we can get from our human perspective, and the really good thing about Subnautica is that this culture learned too that there is nothing stronger than nature, no matter how far ahead you are, nature will catch up to you and will put you back in your natural place. It’s almost poetic how it nearly brought the Architects to extinction. That is why Ryley, who was a nobody and remained a nobody in the big picture of the universe, swam with the current unlike Alterra, the trans-govs and the Architects who swam against it, and why in the end he was rewarded by the Sea Emperor.
Al-An’s whole arc is how he learned this and he paid the price for his arrogance. I think Al-An in BZ is a different person from Al-An from 1000 years ago, because he had a 1000 years to think about how he screwed up and doomed his network and his entire race. This is the story that on a macro scale is supposed to parallel Sam’s story, where she, too, had good intentions, went against her “network” and ultimately paid the price with her own life and took the life of an innocent person. Robin and Al-An’s story is tied the way it is because through her and thanks to her, he is able to finally start seeking redemption, something she couldn’t really do for Sam (but imo, still did in a way). The game does not sugar coat that at the very end of BZ, Al-An is at the beginning of his redemption arc and that it is scary and he is aware that whatever happens he deserves it, but he is ready to face it - to face his failure, his mistake and any punishment that might come his way, because Robin is with him.
Also I do have to point out that Al-An and the Architects in Below Zero were written by a different writer from the Architects in the original Subnautica, and while on a technical level the two stories are following the same canon and writing, you can see how the two writers had a completely different idea for the Architects on some internal level. The OG writer who also wrote the BZ-Early Access had Al-An be cruel, threatening and uncaring, while the current Al-An often says things that insult Robin not out of malice, but out of genuine ignorance and by the end of the story he does respect and understand her. He is also a lot nicer and harmless, and seem to be understanding of her emotions and feelings (unlike most sci-fi aliens of his type, which is why I love him!). These are two very different takes on the Architects that bleed into the writing overall, so BZ paints the Architects more as benevolent, but careless rationalists, while in the original they followed that cliche of superior alien species who do not care for emotions and for inferior life forms as long as they are a means to an end. However neither representation is devoid of a bit of each other at its core. It is hard to place Al-An between both because it is noticeable that two different writers wrote it.
Not trying to start shit obviously but just a reminder that this man is fully on board with animal testing and has done it himself multiple times, even outside of life or death situations.
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Like I feel like we need to remember that every so often. Like no, he would not be up for enviornmentalism or scientific ethics unless someone, probably Robin donwright forces him into it. Im not saying hes down for say diamond mining, but if Architects used oil they would not be any better than people. We need to remembr the messages of the first game, that showed just how fucked up and flawed architects are, and most importantly, how they get schooled by the brutal forces of nature, and have had to pay, hard. Al-An is explicitly made to be someone who thinks he is above nature even more than the average architect.
Nither is Marge btw, she WAS forced into it, and only partially.
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baya-ni · 4 years ago
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Renga Shouldn’t Be Canon (clickbait)
No but seriously, I hope that Renga doesn’t become canon, at least not in the way that I think a lot of people are hoping that it will. Personally, I’m not expecting anything close to a kiss and confession and that’s fine by me.
Queerbaiting is a problem in mainstream media, there’s no doubt about it, and many people both within and outside the queer community are right to feel wary about hoping for that kind of representation. Personally, I’m still caught by surprise every time a queer person or couple is depicted in a normalized and healthy way onscreen. And that just speaks to the appallingly poor representation queer people are so used to seeing.
But I think that fandom likes to throw the word “queerbaiting” around a bit haphazardly, much in the same way faux woke people throw around words like “gaslighting” and “cancel culture”. They’ve become buzz words to evoke immediate feelings of self-righteousness and to prey on person’s fear of appearing ignorant or bigoted.
Unfortunately, I worry that when the season inevitably ends without Renga’s “canonization”, people will unfairly label Sk8 as Queerbait. And I have many Feelings about this- mostly frustration.
But we’re only mid-season. I can only guess where the show is going to go and only make assumptions about fandom behavior based on personal experience, and there’s a high possibility I’ll be proven totally wrong so... take whatever I say with a grain of salt. But anyway, let’s get on with it.
Fundamentally, Sk8 isn’t shoujo, it’s not BL- it’s a sports anime. And while that doesn’t preclude a total absence of romance between its characters, ultimately those aren’t the kinds of relationships that sports anime concerns itself with. The most prominent relationships you’ll see will be more along the lines of Teammates and Rivals (there's also a third dynamic I'm calling Opponents which is Not the same as Rivals but the Opponents dynamic is less relevant to my point so I'll focus on just the first two).
However, it's not hard to see why romantic interpretations are so common among fans of sports anime. At their core, the basis of Teammate and Rival dynamics bear many similarities to that of a compelling romance. Both Teammate and Rival relationships are built upon two characters' mutual admiration and respect for one another, they involve characters learning from one another and being inspired to push themselves to be their best. There's a great deal of trust involved, as is vulnerability, communication, and empathy. In other words, all the essentials of any healthy relationship.
But context and genre are important. I think that a good romance is one that is unique to its characters specific personalities and needs, as well as is believable within the context of the setting and story. For an anime like Sk8, I would find an on-screen kiss strange and out of place (unless it was done for comedic effect which would be... bad).
I'm reminded of this quote from Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which is one of my all time favorite films:
"Do all lovers feel as though they are inventing something? I know the gestures. I imagined them all waiting for you."
And that basically sums up what I've described, albeit more poetically. Love is invention. Romantic gestures form a unique language between lovers. And if I may add, genre and narrative establish the basis for the emotional significance of these gestures.
In a genre like action/thriller, one of the most meaningful things a character can do is risk their safety or straight up sacrifice themselves for another, because bodily harm and physical risks drive the tension in these kinds of narratives. In the romance genre, confessions, physical intimacy, and grand romantic displays serve the same purpose. In something like sports anime, I argue that its gestures like physically accommodating for your teammate, supporting them when they feel dejected, and being motivated to train harder and be better for the sake of being allowed to stand beside them, that hold equivalent significance.
But this is all broadly speaking, and genre is just one element. Characters’ personalities, habits, insecurities, and trauma, as well as a story’s themes, further specify the kinds of gestures that hold the most meaning in a narrative.
Let’s look again at Portrait of a Lady on Fire, on my favorite scenes:
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Portrait is interested in subverting the power imbalance inherent between the Artist and the Muse, the Voyeur and the Subject, the Looker and she who is Looked At. Heloise’s observations of Marianne hold great significance because of this theme; she disrupts the power imbalance by taking back agency as the Subject, demonstrating that she is just as capable of Looking at the Artist just as the Artist does at her. This is visually represented by the framing of the final shot. With the camera pulled back, we now see Marianne as Heloise has been seeing her, and she is now subject to being visually scrutinized in the same way that Heloise has been up to this point in the film.
This scene is so poignant because the romantic gesture it depicts ties heavily to the story’s themes, its characters’ personalities, and its existence is believable within its genre.
Now, let’s bring this all back to Sk8. In this show, what sort of gestures are given the most significance?
Skateboarding. Duh.
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Basically, this line establishes that “basis for emotional significance” that I mentioned earlier, such that skating is the means by which characters and relationships are developed and the plot is driven forward, that any and everything related to skating potentially holds symbolic meaning.
And specifically, equating the act of skating to love then allows for more romantic interpretations of all kinds of scenes. Take for example, these parallel sets of shots from ep 1:
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(I mean cmon look at his tiny blush, it’s fucking adorable) And:
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In a show that equates skating to a “ritual of love”, these scenes can be realistically be interpreted as Langa and Reki falling in love with one another. Skating acts as both the catalyst for their relationship as well as later on being the means by which they express their feelings and develop their relationship.
Skating is their love language.
Ok, I’ll try to wrap this up since this post has gotten wayyy too long. But basically my point is that Renga is about as canon as this show could possibly make it within the confines of its genre and narrative. Romance in sports anime is different from romance in shoujo, but it’s romance all the same, in the same way that different people express love in different ways.
A kiss and confession is not the only means by which a ship can become canon. And I personally would much rather have this kind of carefully crafted symbolism than a kiss just randomly shoehorned in.
But I understand that in the face of centuries of censorship, cop-outs, and barely believable and forced heteronormativity, people want same-sex intimacy onscreen, unapologetic and normalized. I get that.
But in my opinion, Sk8 isn’t queerbait, and it shouldn’t be accused as such just because its characters won’t kiss onscreen. I think this show depicts a wonderful and loving relationship between two boys, that isn’t any less loving just because it doesn’t fit into conventional romantic tropes.
Edit: I did a followup post about Sk8 and its queer representation here, where I go more in depth into the ways that Sk8 represents queerness through beyond its implied homo-romantic relationships.
So yeah, I’d love to hear yalls thoughts :)
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just2bubbly · 3 years ago
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Sometimes Love Stays
Masterlist
TLC Ship Week 2021!
*written for tlcshipweek2021- kaider for the prompt 'In another life'
@kaiderforever
Summary
"Hmm.."
"Do you?"
"Wish you happiness? Yeah, Kai, I do- with all my heart."
"I wish you were happiness!"
Sometimes love becomes stronger overcoming the obstacles thrown along your path, but when the obstacles never end and you become tired enough to want to stop, will 'Love' help overcome the new problem or would it be succumbed to obstacle?
When their future doesn't play out as they want to, will they dare to take a chance or lose everything without trying?
Reading an article, Cinder is thrown back into the past, trying to figure out if the choices she made were right.
A look at Kai and Cinder's relationship through newspaper article fragments.
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Ship: Kaider
Words: 3.2k
Genre: Angst
Prompt: 'In Another Life'
Note: A Canon Divergence AU from Winter- major character/ relationship reflection. Bold contexts are newspaper articles!
Cinder's Perspective:
"Sometimes love stays."
The article read and Cinder could not bring it upon herself to understand the implications of those three words. She considered it was the most preposterous sentence to start a piece of news informing about a break-up. Her mind could only fathom that a hopeless romantic had written this article, one who most certainly believed in unrequited love and stuff- That she could be sure from the very first line. "Many times love seems to not reside in a relationship as the lovers struggle to continue to live together after years of togetherness, but this does not appear to be the case in the infamous royal courtship that lasted for over 10 years but was suddenly called off 2 years ago- Yes, we are talking about no one but The Emperor of Eastern Commonwealth and The Queen of Luna- " Cinder seemed to convince herself that she was only reading it because it was the most trending news on Earth. Yet it was no new news to her or even anyone on Earth and the saint forsaken rock Luna as well. The article had become famous only for its illustrating language and artistic words that seemed to give the entire ordeal a new look. Hence, after having ignored, overlooked and unseen the article, its rumours and the stink eye that her aristocrats sent along her way. She finally decided to read it and fucking get over it- just like she got over him. It was fucking simple until it was not. "The infamous break-up of The Emperor of EC and the Queen of Luna happens to be no news to us. It has been two years since the two royals called off their relationship in the name of diplomatic and personal reasons. However, it appears that the years apart have done no good to their awkward and unresolved heartfelt tension." She wondered which newbie journalist had decided to write about this- about them, the two lovers madly in love with each other, stubborn enough to put others above themselves and naive enough to let it all go. She could feel her body going stiff as she tried to muster up the courage to continue reading. Her mind going numb just like it always did when thoughts of Kai resurfaced. The memories and the murmurs, their banters, his adoration all seemed to drown her with misery- one where she could not shed a single tear but only carry the overwhelming weight of the past of what they had- of what they had lost. It had been good- going at first with the frequent comms in their free time, flying kisses from literally two different worlds, exchanging gifts thanks to the Rampion, jumping at the first chance to meet each other. They were happy and yet they were not. With near to 10 years into being the Queen of Luna, she had thought that maybe she had given her bit to the moon, and now she could step down from her role and convert Luna into a republican state. She had planned her future, their future, the future of thousands of people and had acted accordingly to liberate Luna from the clutches of a single person, forgetting about what the people would have to say about it? Apparently, Lunars loved royalty more than equal representation! Consequently, when she had put the matters of 'abolition of monarchy' to vote she had been made a fool in her own court with the outcome - her vote against all of them. When she had demanded an explanation out of Iko for such a bizarre scenario. She had acknowledged, "They seem to like you as their Queen. It is clear they don't want you to step down!?" "But what about equal representation?" "Cinder you are already giving it to them!" "And what about the aristocrats- Don't they want more say in the administration?" "They do want it but not with the responsibility. Thus they have started preaching about royalty and stuff..." she trailed. Dumbstruck, she had thought how can one gift someone freedom when they don't want it? That's where things started looking down. This made all her plans go downhill. Because hadn't she planned that she would step down, abolish the monarchy and turn it into a Republican government? Hadn't she decided she would be free to live her own life on Earth?
Hadn't she wondered how she would travel with Thorne on Rampion- be truly free for once in her life before having to settle down? Before having to go to New Beijing.
Hadn't they planned that they would stay together- and with every passing day weren't they coming near to achieving their intention to constantly stay together and make up for all the physical affection they had been deprived of over the years? Wasn't it what their future was going to be off? With this new hurdle, plans had to be changed and when she had mentioned this to Kai, he was grief-stricken. Even then, they came up with alternatives, for at that time it was clear- they wanted to spend the rest of their together. They had discussed spending their time between Earth and Luna, tackling the barriers of distance and royalty. It's not like they did not try, it's just that every time they strived harder to stay together- fate made it impossible to. A year later, the realization dawned upon her. It had really taken a long time but it had finally crashed- the full reality of their long-distance engagement relationship, that maybe it was taking a toll on them. That maybe they would not survive through all the distance separating them. She had been avoiding thinking about it lately but she knew even if they tried it was not going to work out, that sooner or later they would have to call it off. 'Call what off?' She had asked herself, wondering how things were going to change. 'All of it' a tiny voice in her mind replied. The engagement, the relationship. Everything. That night she decided against comming Kai, instead, she confronted Iko speaking of her troubling thoughts aloud and from the dark blue, somewhat grey colours of her eyes, Cinder understood how truly sorry she was.
She sat in the arms of Iko, wanting to whine, yell and cry. However, the cruel fate left her with a throbbing sensation in her head and an itchy feeling in the throat. She wanted to see Kai, but she had not the heart to tell him the truth. She presumed he already knew what was troubling her- troubling them. She had not the courage to see the sorrow on his face, so she pretended that everything was fine even when it was not. She smiled and teased him at all the opportunities she could possibly get knowing very well that one day that they would have to stop. One day he would have someone else do that to him. Therefore the next time she had gone on Earth she had confessed it to him. He had listened patiently without a word and had calmly accepted it. The unforgettable silence that followed would haunt Cinder forever. She thought they had fooled themselves enough trying to make the impossible happen, justifying their actions as a result of love. In the end, he had sighed, tears reflecting in his copper-brown orbs and croaked, "I guess this is the end?" She had nodded failing to meet his eyes. "Sorry, Kai", she had uttered, feeling every ounce guilty and sorrowful. They had stood like that for a long time, feet shuffling- gazes never meeting each other until he was called. He did not shed a single tear before her. On her last night at the Palace, she felt a sort of Deja-Vu for all the things around her. Her thoughts roamed around only a single thing- 'After today, this place would no longer be home'. He had come to her room that night and once they had gotten over the awkward small talk of the breakup, he had launched at her and hugged her till her bones crushed. "I love you," he whimpered. "Don't forget it- don't forget it, Cinder. Even when you go to that fucking rock in the sky." And Cinder could feel something warm- not inside her but on her shoulders.
Kai's tears had been falling on her shoulders and she had chanted sorry all the time they stayed like that.
'What do you do to calm two heartbroken souls?'
He was in her arms hearing her speak, though her words were not soothing, they did not reduce his grief like they ought to. They were bitter truth of their future, their fate. They were apologies for what they had lost. Her words were not comforting. She was not going to tell him how they will be fine when she knew they would not. There was no point lying- telling him nicely painted lies of their future when their present was broken like that. She had no idea how but they fell asleep together, a mess of tumbled limbs on the carpet for the last time. And when the streaks of sunlight fell over their sleeping forms, it was not out of hope.
"It seems that it's over for the two royals, one of them the Queen of Luna and the other The Emperor of Eastern Commonwealth. Queen Selene, 26 and Emperor Kaito, 28 called off their relationship yesterday. Emperor Kaito in his latest press speech stated that "Myself and Queen Selene are no longer together- we have parted ways on good terms. However, we are no longer involved," when one of the reporters asked if there was any wedding to be expected soon. The Queen of Luna also addressed this in one of her official posts, saying "It's been great 10 years with Kai but we can no longer stay together," with a bittersweet smile. The two refuse to brief about this. It just seems like just yesterday they were THE happier and attractive couple dancing at the Annual Peace Ball and -well now they are not, we are sure their fans all around must be heartbroken but worry not you can catch up on their relationship through the years-" Two months later, they formally announced their break-up. They called off everything- all of it just like she had thought. The world did not know- they did not know how Kai had gone down on his knees and she had said yes before he could even ask. How she had pieces of her never- going to happen wedding vows drafted somewhere in her brain. It was only them, Torin, Iko and their friends who knew the disaster of grief they had unrolled in their life. He had refused to take the ring back, "Keep it to remember me by." He had insisted and she had not-so jokingly replied, "I don't need jewels to remember you by." Returning to Luna had been the harder task, She-They had cut off all ties except maybe friendship (?) but things were going to be different- they are different.
It felt hollow for months later, she drowned herself in work to forget about the messy-haired boy, to forget that there was no one waiting for her comms now, that she did not have someone to whisper 'I love you's too', to kiss him and be found by someone, no reason for Thorne to shout 'Get a room.'
She had for the first few days been hopeless- locking herself up, both metaphorically and literally only to realize that Kai had been an integral part of her daily schedule and world even from thousands of miles away. The breaks that she once looked forward too, taunted her of what she had lost- so she was hell-bent on working the day without breaks. She forced her mind to not stray around to the boy on Earth. The only moment she had let her guard down was when Thorne was visiting- because he was her BFF and wasn't he the one who teased her all along about Kai and his heavenly copper-brown eyes? Wasn't he going to be her rock where she had lost her anchor? At the sight of his friend's dark circles, thinner than the usual frame, Thorne and Cress had bear-hugged her and the only thing that she felt was it felt good to be embraced by someone other than Iko. 'I'm so sorry, Cinder', Thorne had said and she had croaked, "Don't be sorry." She had cracked that day.
"I DON'T WANT PITY THORNE, I DON'T WANT TO HEAR HOW PEOPLE THOUGHT WE WOULD GET MARRIED AND LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER. I DON'T WANT THE MEDIA TO TELL ME HOW WE LOOKED GOOD TOGETHER. I FUCKING HATE LUNARS TELLING ME THAT THEY HOPE I FEEL BETTER. AM I NOT IN THIS CONDITION BECAUSE THEY CHOOSE TO BE SELFISH? THORNE, I WANT TO CRY AND MY STUPID CYBERNETICS WOULD NOT EVEN ALLOW BE TO CRY FOR MY EX-FIANCEE." She might have been a bit tipsy to blow up like that but she was past caring. She had been pretending that everything was fine while she was falling apart inside. "What sort of cruel joke is this? Haven't I already endured enough? I don't want anyone's fucking apologies. I don't want that crap, I- I want K-Kai."
She yelled as her face echoed pain. "Do I not deserve love, Thorne?" She had demanded, looking very vulnerable. She never said a word after that. The next big blow came when she had attended the world leader summit. Thankfully, it was a virtual thing or she could not have gone through the entire ceremony without a mental breakdown. She had felt the air knock out of her lungs at the sight of Kai after six whole months. He looked paler than normal, his always messed up hair looked neatly fixed in place with layers of hair gel. And his ever blinding grin present at even stupid meetings like this was now merely his lips pressed together in a thin line.
How was Kai who was her joy in human form suddenly became the picture of grief? She wondered how she looked to him if even he was out of breath at the sight of her- realizing how she was drifting away from the main reason she was attending the summit, she forced herself to look at anywhere but him. That night she slept thinking about how she was not the only one suffering. "-The Emperor of EC starts a new journey in his life at 30. However, there are no wedding bells in the air as of now, making the world and the EC anticipate the future of their Emperor and their nation. At 30, the Emperor not committed to anyone nor having any living heir had caused multiple questions to be unanswered about the legacy after him. Hopefully, he will find his partner to secure their future until then we wish him a Very Happy Birthday!" Marriage. Wedding. Love. Hadn't it been what they had lost? She knew this was going to happen. Then why did she feel like drowning all over again? Why did her heart shatter yet again? He was no longer hers to worry about...Was he even part of her world anymore? She knew it very well that he was supposed to marry someone. He must marry someone and have an heir to the Commonwealth. Cinder was asked to do the very same thing. They were monarchs who had to keep their legacies alive. The next time she was invited for the Annual Peace Ball, Kai had cornered and said, "They want me to get married." "Tell me you are saying this because you want the ring back." She had jokingly said, swallowing the sadness and jealously that threatened to submerge her. Her mind asked if he would go down on his knees at the Ball just like he had done for Levana. But that was just her stupidity, misery and desperation mixed together. How was her tyrant aunt going to manage her marriage with Kai by living on Luna along with her sinister motives?! "Cinder" "Kai", she pleaded, underlying the please without saying it. She averted her eyes and nonchalantly asked," Have someone in mind?" "No", he replied without a beat, making her at ease but what he said next crushed her healing heart again. "But I have someone in my heart." She could not stand around him without wanting to kiss him senseless. Therefore, she said, "I wish you happiness, Kai." And tried to walk away until he questioned, "Do you?" "Hmm.." she replied, looking back at him. "Do you?" He repeated. "Wish you happiness? Yeah, Kai, I do- with all my heart." "I wish you were happiness!" Looking at his lean frame dressed in the colours of EC she dared to speak, "I wish that too." She had not returned after that episode but maybe she would have to. Soon. "The Emperor has been sighted with Chen Daiyu, daughter of Chen Zian, the Chief Commandant of Light Chariot, she is an activist working towards the liberation of perils faced by cyborgs in modern society, along with being a psychotherapist by service. It's not the first time that they have been seen together making people hope that it's not the last. There are rumours about their courting with no confirmation from any one of the two-It appears the Emperor has finally moved on from his last date with Queen Selene. Only time will tell if the Emperor has found his Empress or not." She could not blame anyone. They were just pressing time trying to avoid some inescapable future- yet why did her mind ask if he had learned Chen Daiyu's favourite flowers? or Did he hold her as he had held her once? Wondered if he explained to her why there was a cyborg's foot in his room? She was cursing goddamn every star because it was not just him but even she was looking into suitors!? She had gone on dates with a few, noticing how one of them grinned like Kai with a dimple on his left cheek, how someone scratched their necks when they were flustered or how some of them had a struggle keeping their hair in place- without wanting to she was searching for Kai everywhere in them. None of the two was married yet. It was okay to imagine about him for a while. It was okay for grief to overwhelm her. Maybe that's what she needed to
move on from her past.
Had they moved on? Had they stopped loving each other? 'NO!'- she shook her head violently to no one in particular.
She loved him even now. There will always be some part of her mind that will love him. Maybe it was treasuring their memories while making new ones. Two years later reading an article about them, she thought if maybe she had tried harder, would they be together? Alas, there was no point fantasizing when both time and distance had separated them? Could they start from where they had left? Or would they be two broken pieces no longer fitting?
"Sometimes love stays," The article read again. "But lover's don't." Maybe if distance, time and qualms of royalty were not preventing them then things could have been different, their lives could have been different. Perhaps in a life with different circumstances, they would have been together unlike this one- where they had briefly touched, in another life possibly their tale could have had a happy ending. Maybe if she was Cinder and not Queen Selene Channary Jannali Blackburn of Luna, and if he was just Kai and not Emperor Kaito of the Eastern Commonwealth then they would have made it till the end.
But they were not and that's what mattered. __
A/N: We are done! :)
I know you would likely want to hit me right now since I promised certain someone that there would be no angsty fics for at least a few months and yet HERE I AM!
I have kinda portrayed Iko in this really bad, so sorry about that! And you have no idea how much frustrated I was that Cinder could not cry, like crying is such a essential part of human behavior and having to describe her grief without tears was certainly a challenge. I hope I did her character well- You guys have no idea how much break-up articles I have read just to get the news articles right. I might as well do a course on journalism later ;)
Was that a bit too much angst? and yeah in this fic they are secretly engaged!
This was written for the TLC Ship Week, the word prompt for this one was 'In Another Life'. However, I had already planned it beforehand with no idea of  how the ship-week was going to give me the perfect opportunity to post this. I know I'm cruel right?
This idea had been going a lot in my mind since I made @salt-warrior write her fic 'Anyone Else', and read the fic 'After' on AO3, along with 'Once' by @/betaluz. I just thought that maybe Cinder failed to get past the boundaries of royalty on Luna and converting it into a Republican, wondering if that happened what would happen to her relationship with Kai. Hence, this sudden angsty take.
Tell me which is your favorite part from this?
And don't worry I have more angst lined up for you! <3
Taglist: @cinderswrench @gingerale2017 @linhcinder686 @shellyseashell @ladyvesuvia @shelbylmkaider @levanariddle @cindersassasin @kaider-is-my-otp (Tell me if you wanna be added/removed)
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